Transcript for:
Understanding Erikson's Psychosocial Development

all right next up we have Ericson's psychosocial Theory this is one of my favorites it's built off Freud's earlier work but with a lot of changes so Freud suggested that human behavior is motivated by Sexual Energy he was really into that I have tried to rewrite it and Freud keeps slapping me over the face and calling me naive Ericson suggested he's more of my vibe that human behavior is motivated by social needs but also identity needs and basically we keep cycling through these different stages eight developmental stages non-continuous um always in order but through each one you see like a really common struggle which is can I trust the world versus can I trust myself sometimes we purely focus on whether or not we can trust other people other times it's how other people responds to us and how that influences our sort of identity um if you read eriksson's um depiction of his own Theory it really seems to be quite linear he would argue that you really my impression I have actually read his original work but you know when you read that many books some things get lost um my impression is like he wouldn't think that you all would be able to understand the like last stage of development which is supposed to be for the elderly I would argue that nowadays you absolutely can and I'm uncertain that he ever put it like that harshly um I would also argue that we get the opportunity to kind of circle back through some of these stages instead of it being kind of Doomsday because essentially the way Ericson presents his theory is like each of these stages has some sort of crisis and you have to resolve it or um you resolve it in either a healthy or an unhealthy way another thing I want us to think about is what it means to be healthy versus unhealthy considering people grow up in really different environments um so without further Ado let's go through the theory I've decided that what I'm going to do is Show an example of somebody cycling through all of the unhealthy um directions someone cycling through all the Healthy Directions and then we'll kind of analyze it so here's all of them all in one take okay Ericson psychosocial Theory first one trust versus mistrust so let's imagine Sally Sally grows up in the type of household where Mom and Dad every time she cries they come and pick her up really quickly Sally's parents remain on a strict protocol of we feed her at the same times every day and so Sally develops this like trust in the world so let's first think about how important that question is to your current identity do you think the world is a trustworthy or safe place do you in general feel optimistic about the way the world is a lot of people say that that's a core part of who they are either like really trusting the world and thinking it's a really Gucci place or generally kind of being dissatisfied with the world um both of those people consider that part of their identity what Ericson is arguing is that that is not really your decision at all that probably however which way you feel about the world has been trained in you from a very young age let's think about Tom Tom's parents were a little bit free-spirited they believed that we all have our own unique journey and they would sometimes pick up Tom they weren't hateful or anything they would pick up Tom when he cried but other times they'd be like you know what it's important that he finds his own Bliss in life and sort of let him cry it out more than perhaps typically be advised Tom's parents had a really disregulated schedule so they weren't able to feed him at the same time every day and so Tom in general doesn't have a lot of trust for his parents he probably wouldn't have a very secure attachment so on and so forth now according to Ericson um Tom would have M trust in the world which is an unhealthy development however for Tom to develop trust in his environment probably wouldn't be super appropriate because he can't trust his environment so how are we going to call Tom unhealthy in addition to say that the healthy resolution of this stage is having trust in the world is kind of arguing that it is true that the world is generally a safe place whereas I would argue that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that that's not super true and this is one of the values in um wondering if we can kind of cycle back that maybe after a certain period you say well in general I trust the world in general I like life and I think it's like a worthwhile Journey or whatever um but now that I've seen more of the world I'm wondering if I just got like super lucky and maybe it does make sense to not have a lot of trust in the world in fact maybe people who grow up in a very trustworthy House end up having more traumatic experiences later because they really weren't expecting them um in any case if it is possible that you cycle back through these stages what I would argue is the foundation is still there so even if you uh grow up in a really tumult let's say a really like abusive house and not like Tom's house an abusive house you really can't trust that house and then and you have a lot of childhood trauma later on you grow up you develop your own little Community your own little family and you really can trust them even though all of your behaviors are going to consciously decide to trust and love those individuals your nervous system is still going to be programmed to constantly be kind of on edge because of this first year of life so I do think you get to Circle back and consciously choose your perspectives of the world and I think that everybody I would highly recommend have a little bit of column A and A little bit of column B but I do think Ericson was on to something that in general you get trained in One Direction or the other the next stage is autonomy versus shame and doubt so if trust versus mistrust I'm a helpless little infant the I can't walk I can't talk I can only cry do they respond to my cries it's all about the world and the environment autonomy versus shame and doubt um toddlers start to be able to walk so they start to question can I direct my own behavior Sally's parents have put up um toddler safety mechanisms every everywhere so every harsh corner has some sort of soft attachment to it such that Sally can walk around and even though her parents care a lot about her safety and want to anxiously obsessively watch everything she does they know that it's important that Sally learned that she can explore her environment and because they've put up all of these safety mechanisms they let her walk around and Sally starts to feel like she is allowed to explore I can trust my environment and as it turns out I can trust myself Tom on the other hand his parents are starting to really question whether they can continue living in this like free-spirited Type of Way Tom is the last person to be potty trained at his preschool and his parents tell the or his teachers tell his parents that they really need to work on that at home so Tom is trying to learn how to potty train but every time he messes up his parents are now starting to get pretty anxious that maybe they're bad parents and so they can be a little bit harsh on him they can make him feel sort of ashamed when he pees the bed they don't mean to but when they see that he pees the bed they get really angry because they're really exhausted and he sees his parents yelling at each other after he pees the bed and he starts to feel smaller and smaller and smaller so he has this sense of Shame and doubt what I want to point out about this stage is the morality that's already being imbued in us kids can only think about right and wrong left and right very categorical ways of seeing the world they don't see Nuance so whereas when we get older we can uh delineate the difference between like shame versus guilt shame is like I'm an ashamed person I hate myself and guilt is like h i could have done that a little bit better so guilt we see as a little bit healthier but the fact of the matter is we can't understand that as one to three yearolds instead we start to develop how we see ourselves so shame is actually more of the foundational feeling even though we see it as like if someone's ashamed of themselves as an adult you think like gosh they must really like be hating on themselves in this scary evil way but it probably started off when they were quite quite quite young and again I want to think about the Morality In this especially as we go to the next stage the next stage is initiative versus guilt so at this stage the child's social world begins to widen they start playing with other people maybe they're in kindergarten now and um the idea is you can be a good boy or a bad boy way they start to be disciplined by teachers and they start to learn that there's social repercussions for some of their actions at home they can just pick up a toy and play with it and it's no big deal at school if they pick up a toy but another kid was playing that kid's going to get mad at them they might tell the teacher and it turns out now I'm a bad person I'm getting you know yelled at by my teacher not yelled at hopefully but you know disciplined by my teacher so um let's think about a really common example that lots of people have been through the spilled milk moment in childhood so parents will try their best to get their kiddos to um eat messy Foods at the table and liquids besides water at the table because God forbid they spill milk on the couch right so Sally's parents um give her sippy cups and whatnot but accidentally Sally brings her sippy cup to the table or to the couch and it completely goes upside down and a little bit of milk gets on the couch and so Sally's parents go like oh no see this why we have sippy cups and so usually we would drink milk at the table come on help Mom clean up a little bit so at that point Sally starts to realize that there are consequences for some of her actions but she realizes that there's always something you can do next if something goes a little bit wrong so she feels this initiative to take responsible action and means she can confidently make decisions because she's also pretty confident that she can fix it if things go arai she feels in general like a good person Tom on the other hands Tom's parents did not buy sippy cups he has regular cups and he's doing his darnest to pick up this big old cup and take a sip okay so then Tom drops the milk on the couch and Tom's parents are no longer free Spirits Tom's parents are stressed and so Tom's parents don't mean to yell at Tom instead they start yelling at each other you let him take the milk on the couch why'd you do that now it's going to smell like milk and we're going to have to throw the couch out we can't afford a new cup did or a new couch D and Tom's sitting there like I can't even drink milk correctly he's not actually having that thought but that's how it feels and I want us to once again think about this guilt type of a feeling think about the last time you didn't get a good grade on an exam or you said something that maybe other people found like weird or whatever um let's think about the exam example first it probably especially nowadays doesn't just feel like oh you know why did I get that question wrong and I guess I have to learn more about that topic instead it's got this moral underpinning to it and that's because of this foundation in childhood where we don't understand the difference between like oh I should have gotten or I could have gotten that question better or right if I had understood this instead it's like you're lazy this is a judgment on you so on and so forth because kids can only look at right wrong correct incorrect fits into the same categories as um right and wrong correct incorrect and it's really hard to overcome this for example I teach ballet nowadays and there's some dancers that are just naturally gifted um you give them a correction like you have to turn out your feet in ballet you tell them to turn out and it's like they were born with their feet turned out and once they turn their feet out my mind goes oh that's good okay moving right along I don't have to fix it pH because I'm flipping exhausted and then other dancers you know they just weren't naturally born with their feet turned out like this and so I'll give them that correction but their body can't do it the same way the naturally talented person can do and because my brain is set up just like everyone else's to go correct incorrect good bad I'll be really tempted to see that person without the natural turnout as being not listening to my corrections which is more of a moral thing because it feels disrespectful to me so each time you start to feel like someone is a good or bad person you might literally be just kind of judging them based on natural act natural inclinations in One Direction or the other and um connecting it to some kind of like moral goodness or moral incorrectness it's crazy how loud morality can get then we're at the industry versus inferiority stage so in every other stage this is six years to puberty so in every other stage basically kids are just completing actions or not completing actions I'm either going to walk around and explore my environment or I'm not I'm either going to pick up this ball and try and throw it or I'm not they don't really understand that you can do things well or you can do things not so great it's just can I do it can't I do it industry versus inferiority because kids can cognitively understand more about the world they start to ask themselves can I do it well can I be industrious and master tasks so Sally um isn't like a naturally good artist or anything but she's on this upward path she feels like she can take responsible action and she's pursuing tasks so they're given an assignment let's say they're eight years old they are told to draw a landscap cape and so Sally is just like drawing you know some grass a tree she's got the circular sun right in the begin right in the middle of the page very kind of basic and then Sally looks over at Sam and Sam has clearly had some artistic training or is a natural because Sam has decided to put you know the sun in the corner of the page that's super artistic how the heck did Sam think think to do that that's an entirely different perspective Sam's got a tree here the sun is Boom is shining on the tree and then on the grass Sam has made a little Shadow how the heck did Sam learn how to do that Sally looks over at Sam and go like oh that looks really cool I wonder if I can do that and so Sally flips the um sheet over and tries to draw it herself um because she looks at that person that's doing it just a little bit better and goes like Oh I wonder if I can learn how to do that and if it comes out really bad then maybe Sally tries something else or keep trying um Tim on the other hand draws the same exact drawing that Sally draws like very basic but looks over at Sam I guess Tim's on this side looks over at Sam and goes like I didn't I didn't know that we were supposed to do that I'm bad at drawing and um then becomes really kind of small and ashamed and feels like incompetent and unproductive like not only can I not drink a glass of water but I also even if I try to draw this I did what the teacher told me to do it's still not good enough this question of not being good enough good enough is really loud in this era and it makes it really hard to figure out how to encourage kids because on the one hand learning how to draw like Sam draws is a really cool skill but if you try and help Timothy kind of imitate slightly better drawing it's kind of like poking this bruise so it's really important to first point out that like you did exactly what I told you to do like that that's so great and that's a perfect drawing lots of people would say that like that's the ideal drawing um if you wanted to learn how to do it this way I can show you how to do it this way and the poor teacher is exhausted also all right now we're in adolescence identity versus identity confusion you have all of this data about how you fit into the world around you and how you can interact with that world now you want to form your sense of identity who you are where you're going what matters most to you considering what you think the expectations of the world are very importantly we find our identity through two kind of seemingly opposite forces exploration and commitment at the end of this stage teens are supposed to feel like they have some like strong sense of positive identity but it really is tricky to figure out what all that means um just like in these previous stages like yeah you you don't want 3 to 5 year-olds to feel like particularly guilty however perhaps the 3 to 5-year-olds who live in a really harsh environment are being better set up for like the real world um you know I worked at a studio once and someone accidentally forgot to lock the door if they were um from a family where if you make a mistake like you know certainly at least like the first time you get another chance like maybe that was a really important moment and now you know like oh shoot I sometimes forget things and you put the reminder in your phone you know in fact that first mistake is a really important learning mechanism they don't have that sense of anxiety but because they have this trust that the world isn't going to slap them over the face if they make one little mistake they do forget to lock the door and then like that person got fired immediately the first time because the studio owners obviously were really nervous to trust them ironically if they did trust them I bet that person would be a less anxious and scared than other type of employees and B probably not make that mistake again but because um they that person didn't have so much anxiety about how the world is going to respond to them they didn't they weren't anxious kind of automatically so then you have to ask yourself like how important is that feeling of anxiety too much anxiety is going to destroy you but not having enough might not be indicative of like the real world I don't know a single adult that's not kind of very stressed out which I think is a problem with the world that we live in and we could seek to change it but it is a truth about the world and sometimes Ericson's Theory looks a little bit like the healthy direction is not real um but that's not true because if some people go the healthy direction it is real for them um but gosh the unhealthy Direction seems to be a little bit more indicative of some of the harshest truths of real we'll get back to that in a second so um this one in particular is hard to figure out what the best outcome is because yes you want to have a strong sense of positive identity but like what does that mean think about some um uh categories of your identity things like what you want to do with your life so your occupational interests um what type of people you hang out with your social group um how you define yourself in your relationships um so like do you consider yourself to be a friend and your friends are a big part of your identity or are you really an individual and your friends are important to you but not like you don't base your identity off of them both of those are valid it's a cultural thing uh your religious affiliations your political affiliations your sexual identity your romantic identity so on and so forth so all of those different categories right that's a lot of categories and sometimes teens want so badly to present themselves as mature they'll run right to commitment like immediately they'll be like oh I know I'm gonna be a doctor um maybe because their parents are doctors maybe because their parents are forcing them to be doctors and even though that's is like the kind of the final stage is to be somewhat committed to a couple of those categories at least if you skip over the process of exploration you are not really committed in an informed way instead you skipped over some stuff so you have to find identity through both exploration and commitment and what Ericson would argue and honestly I do argue this is as well is if you haven't explored appropriately um then you're you you haven't really achieved what you want to achieve so we talked about like sexual identity a couple last class I suppose um with the Kinsey scale I mention this that perhaps the healthiest sexual identity is someone who really has allowed themsel to ponder various different directions that would be a good example of like exploration but eventually you want to be committed to one thing or the other but you know nowadays life is so long and people switch careers all the time like is it the healthiest thing to by the end of your teenage years know for sure you want to be a doctor um it's kind of like balancing open-mindedness with a certainty that if I went this direction I could go this direction and I think I want to go this direction so you want to balance those two and generally have some sort of like positive uh beliefs about yourself unhealthy is confusion about who they are but I think really the unhealthy version is being disinterested in who they are so if you're a little bit unsure what your major is that can be really unhealthy I mean really healthy that means that you're open-minded and you're going to be open to new experiences in college um but an unhealthy uh identity is like I just don't care like think about the person like constantly getting smaller and smaller like I just don't care I just don't care you know it doesn't matter it doesn't matter um without even trying I think that gen genuinely is is um something worth acknowledging and trying to sort through versus I I think the difference between I definitely want to be a doctor and like I'm going to try some things out I'd say those are both pretty healthy um then intimacy versus isolation so really you two you guys most of you are in the 18 to 22 year old group um are probably somewhere in between these two which makes sense because the next one is intimacy versus isolation which is establishing intimate relationships with others so in Pre station uh in previous stages um social relationships were mostly about like how is the environment going to treat me considering who I happen to be surrounded with in a lot of ways in college or post College you have a little bit more freedom about who you choose to pursue as your friends as your Intimate Relationships um so can I Forge the healthy relationships from beginning to to end now that I have all that experience in my past and now that I know who I am so healthy intimacy versus isolation phase looks like being able to form healthy intimate relationships and unhealthy looks like isolation now importantly some people go through stages where they just kind of choose to be isolated there's a big difference between like knowing you can form relationships and know that you probably will again in the future but in this season of my life I really want to focus on myself that I would stay say is still healthy and if you think you fit into that um group I would really allow yourself to wonder like have I formed those healthy relationships in the past am I avoiding trying to form healthy relationships or am I genuinely choosing to right now Go My Own Way even though I know I could talk to that person if I really wanted to if talking to somebody else feels so scary then perhaps putting on genuinely it takes a lot of Bravery to start some of those conversations but keeping in mind what I said in a previous lecture that that might be the best thing that happens to that person that day um yeah if you if it's a fear thing I would recommend you give it a try anyway um but if it's an active decision then knowing you're not failing by making that active decision is the perspective that's going to help you um make different decisions in the future if you do decide that you don't want to be isolated for the rest of your life which most people don't um I do think that a healthy human life involves love and relationships um oh another cool thing about these two stages is they tend to really inform one another so in America we tend to really value like individualism like you need to be who you are before you have relationships but the truth is your most intimate relationships absolutely should influence your identity if you are in a relationship that's meant to be a forever relationship whether it's a best friendship a family member or a romantic relationship they should sear into your soul they should influence who you are as a person it should be one of those grab yourself throw it against the wall watch the pieces fall and then put it all back together type of moments and most people do kind of Define themselves based on their most important um the most important people in their life um I want to share a story about how much these two intertwine that I think does a really nice job of describing um the lgbtq struggle from any perspective I really think that this story is helpful no matter where you stand on that stance okay so I had this client and he was a teenager and he was one of my favorite clients of all time this kid was a flipping genius I had to study before some of our sessions together he was philosophically brilliant the poor kid was mostly suffering because he was just smarter than literally everybody else um and anyways so we were talking and we were trying to help him feel like he fits in a little bit better so on and so forth and so he starts telling me about how he likes this girl and he really wants to ask her out we're trying to work on social skills and things like that again one of my favorite clients another thing that we had been working on before he started telling me about the girl was his relationship with his dad his relationship with his mom was absolutely wonderful one of the most supportive women I've ever met um awesome um they were part of the Christian Community and I thought that they uh were able to bring their faith in in a way that was really helpful to his development it was a really beautiful thing to kind of watch um his relationship with his dad was really difficult I think his dad was in the army or something but like a an officer like someone like really oppressive and he wasn't around a whole lot when he was around their relationship was very like um almost like I'm going to meet you at this scheduled time we're going to talk on the about the things on our itinerary and I have expectations for how we supposed to act and I don't really have a lot of patience for struggles vulnerability emotions things like that so that type of dadon relationship um I really do think that boys struggle a lot with feeling like they are allowed to have feelings that they're allowed to have sadness and I think that that means that they struggle a lot with hearing other people's problems and trying to solve them in a compassionate way it's a lot of avoidance in man culture partly because we sent men off to war and so it's really scary to not only be sent off to war but also be needing to feel your fear as you communicate it to others so and anyways so he has a strange relationship with his Dad we're kind of talking about that how that has influenced his sense of identity his sense of masculinity so on and so forth and then he likes this girl he tells me about this girl I'm like oh this is so exciting we can talk about how to forge this type of relationship so on and so forth then the next week he comes in and and he's very serious and he wants to have this conversation with me that um he you know feels really scared to talk about and I'm like okay for sure um let's hear it and so he tells me that actually he's been thinking about it and he thinks that he's gay and just hasn't been able to admit it to himself because of his culture so on and so forth so at this point in my career life I was going through a little bit of an exploration issue I'm from New York in New York if you're not a liberal you're bad it was kind of cold-like um when I moved to Texas one of the first things I wanted to do was to question that belief because I did not want to believe that half of the country is morally bad and so I was actually around Republicans there are no Republicans almost in New York City at least not the part that I was in um or at least if there were they were not willing to talk about it probably because we were kind of mean um but so I got to Texas and I'm like give me the Republicans let me learn the alternative perspective um and a different type of religion I did grow up kind of Catholic but um it was in a big part of my identity so I was trying to learn more about this culture so when I was presented with this problem I could literally hear two different trains of thoughts I could hear the liberal one and I could hear the one that was trying to really be on the side of the conservatives as well so the liberal version was just like oh my gosh it is the most important thing that you simply um guide him through this experience this is him telling his truth to you everything else was him wearing a mask and make sure that you support support support the other part of me was not not supporting his sexual identity um I can understand where people come from by looking at certain texts and where they come to certain conclusions for themselves for myself I don't think that there's anything wrong with with being gay and I think that every single person should be able to question their own sexual identity so on and so forth um but the more conservative part of me was basically allowing myself to acknowledge the contradiction allowing myself to hold these two sessions equal that last week he was really excited about this girl and this week he's gay so the conservative part of me or the part that was able to welcome in the conservative side was just like okay what if I deal with this contradiction what if I um don't rush right to like commitment and help him hypothesize like what all is going on so first very importantly validate validate validate this is a really scary thing for him to admit and so I really tried to create as much space for that as possible okay so what would be the next step and he definitely wanted to tell his mom but he was really scared about telling his dad but he really wanted to tell his dad it's like he was imagining in his mind this moment where he finally has to confront his dad with some type of information that might allow him to answer the question does my dad really love me so basically if all of this time he had been like this really great student this like in general a good son but like he wasn't so into the army type stuff um he was more of like an intellectual and his dad was like kind of okay with that um as long as he followed certain rules whatever so if he came to his dad with this identity issue I'm gay it would be like a test to his dad is one hypothesis that I was allowing myself to hear because I had opened my own floodgates to be able to look at things more complexly and um you know I don't think that this is always the case obviously in this particular situation it was obvious to me that there was a conflict here that he was still exploring um because there's a girl and maybe girl is just so cool like it's more about that um and there's his relationship with his dad and all of that is influencing his identity So eventually what we did is we had this wonderful conversation with his mom and his mom was so supportive she was a little bit confused too because I think she he had told the mom about the crush on the girl so she he was she was allowing herself to talk about that and um because the mom was so supportive we were then able to have a conversation about um you know uh like what what all led to this Epiphany apparently you know he looked at Ryan Reynolds and was like he's super attractive and I'm like dude any person who tells you that Ryan Reynolds is not attractive is lying I don't care if they're the straightest person that's ever existed that man's face is symmetrical um and so we were able to like joke a little bit and um anyway he told his mom but then he also kept building this relationship with the girl and all of that was filtering into his identity and eventually he kind of like tabled it he was sort of like I want to pursue this relationship with this girl and I really do like her so I guess you know at the at most I'm by and we were sort of like satisfied with that sort of in between moment and he ended up not telling his dad and then at that moment I did allow myself to hypothesize like gosh maybe he is gay and a lot of his um uh a lot of the more heterosexual stuff is him trying to avoid that conversation with his dad and so then that point I posed that question to him as well so basically instead of being this master manipulator behind the scenes dealing with all of my own stuff I brought it to the table I was very honest with him I'm like listen I'm a liberal part of me is just like I'm supportive of you and I am so supportive of you and if that's the direction you want to go like let's figure it out another part of me just like does notice this contradiction um between the girl and like maybe you want this moment with your dad where you test his unconditional love for you um but then a couple sessions later when he's decided to not tell his dad about it because he was dating this girl I was like okay well now what's coming to mind is maybe you really do want to tell your dad maybe it is really important for you to have this commitment to a particular identity whether it's gay or by um and now you're avoiding it because of your dad and I think at that time I had finally exhausted the philosopher every therapeutic orientation that I've ever found useful is always demonstrating some sort of balancing act for example acceptance and commitment therapy suggest that the best way to grow and develop as a human being is to balance acceptance of who you are and you cannot change you cannot pursue like the next step in your life until you accept who you are so if you just start hating on yourself how do I do better get better grow faster whatever you actually won't instead you have to love yourself as you are um so I think it's helpful to basically see yourself as perfect just the way you are and to give that Grace to others that being said everybody got a very different experience of their childhood and a big Transcendent moment in this era of life is how are you going to choose to see your parents and you have to Choose Wisely um you can't just convince yourself that I want to be a mama's boy or a daddy's girl or something like that and even if you weren't given that love I'm still going to see them that way you have to be able to look at them clearly um and so for some people that means treating your parents the way you would treat your friend or the way you would treat yourself it means defending them it means seeing them as perfect I think this is true of everyone see as perfect just the way they are but for some parents I do believe in ideal parenting I do believe that some parents even the things that we could perceive as as perceive of as mistakes the day they picked you up late that we one or two times um that's your opportunity to practice unconditional love and if those moments never existed you would never get that opportunity on the other hand for some people their relationship with their parents as they go into their older years means being willing to a acknowledge that they really had to parent themselves and it would be unfair and untrue of them to purely kind of um give too much credit to people that takes away from their actual experiences you can still give Grace you can still have love for people you can still say I was meant to parent myself and if I had had different parents I wouldn't be able to say that so with so much certainty and so I was meant to be part of this family um and I think that some parents are able to hear that and be like yeah you know gosh I bet that was kind of hard for you my job was incredibly difficult I'm so grateful that we're still having family Christmases Here and Now how do we grow better and have a real adult relationship going forward and then other parents if you try and explain that like I really think that the summary of my childhood was that was really difficult they're not going to be able to hear that and then those adult children have the opportunity to like decide what to do next how much those parents are going to be part of their lives so on and so forth and then again some kids when they look back in their childhood it's just it really is pure gratitude and um this moment of transcendence means graduating to the point where you're equal with your parents there's going to be moments where you're able to teach them something and if you have a really strong bond as adults they respect you as their equals they're going to be able to be like oh this is so cool the tables have turned you know um my recommendation is choosing at least one hot take and see if your parents will kind of like learn from you as you um discuss your differences or something like that even if it's something stupid like the TV show that they hate you decide that it's the best TV show in the world you know um those are really important again Transcendent sort of moments and also keeping in mind that yes we all want that graduation moment like I promise you if you don't want it yet you will to be treated like an equal to be respected um however there's another part of us that never wants to not be somebody's cherished adored protected person uh which is why I mentioned reparenting in the first part of this lecture series that even if you're seen as an equal somehow that relationship can exist while still always being a cherished little kid and the cool thing about this Transcendent moment is you can start to see your parents and their need to be kind of um protected too maybe their reputation sort of protected which is why parents can get really defensive when their adult children try and talk about some of the struggles of childhood so lots different Journeys to take okay then we have the last two stages so according to ericsen you all most of you are not in either one of these stages but I think that you actually can start to understand for exist for and maybe you even like can experience these stages generativity versus stagnation is being concerned with the Next Generation so if any of you are leaders in your organizations or you serve as a mentor or you babysit young kids or anything like that this is kind of generativity versus stagnation now of course middle adulthood does feel a little bit different it feels like okay I've I have my um romantic partner I have the job that I'm probably going to have forever do I feel like I'm just coasting for the rest of life like I'm just settling in for the winter and I'm not really motivated to do a whole lot for anything it feels like um just inhaling and exhaling I certainly know some middle-aged adults who um approach life like that or do I feel like I'm helping younger Generations develop and Thrive do I feel like I'm giving back I'm contributing something my life has purpose and meaning that's a really B big part of this stage um and then and I do think that you all understand this stage because you know there's so much pressure on you guys to understand like climate change or whatever or everything you post on the internet might be used against you I think you're constantly thrust into this stage like knowing that your actions have um hopefully positive repercussions and then integrity versus despair the really important thing about this stage is that you reflect back on life you kind of circle back to this initial question question of is the world a good place or a bad place but it's more self-focused it's did I make the world a good or bad place and this is one of the biggest questions that I have is do you think that I have an opinion on this but because I I know very brilliant older individuals who fall on different sides of the spectrum so a healthy um late later adulthood your Twilight years your elderly years feels like um you lived a life you lived your life well you don't have overwhelming regrets basically but to truly live a life of integrity means you're able to look back and really spend some time with both the positive and the negativ I know older adults who seem to be healthy and that they're really positive and they will tell you all the most positive things like a Hallmark card but if you try and talk about the harshest parts of their life they will not talk about it that is not actually integrity Ericson's psychosocial theory is still the unconscious Theory like you don't know that you're in this stage so it's still very Freudian um it's just not focused on sex drives so if you are putting that much stuff into the just don't think about it box that you can't talk about the negatives that is not actually Integrity Integrity is yeah making decisions that are hard if they are the right decisions even if they're hard so on and so forth very like Aggie honor um or agie code of conduct sort of a vibe agie value I think Integrity is one of aie values but Integrity from an unconscious theory is integrating and means being able to look at the positive look at the negatives and come to a wise summary of all of it and a healthy life well-lived will feel like you can feel confident that you did your part an unhealthy according to Erikson is a despair over a life of regrets and I do think that an that unhealthy um later adulthood does exist in people who only look at the negatives and we not even acknowledge the positives we'll not acknowledge all the people who tried their best to love them um all the moments that were quite magical that to me is unhealthy however I know older adults who are incredibly wise and can look at both the positives and the negatives and the negatives do hold love in their heart and hold so much love in their heart that they're willing to look back at humanity and be like I don't know I don't know if the human endeavor is worth it um and I think that's really valid and if if we say that that is purely unhealthy um then we're kind of unwilling ourselves to even entertain that hypothesis and if you can't entertain the hypothesis you can't ever know if there's evidence to support that that's true or not some of the kindest people I know are willing to be very harsh about their perspectives on Humanity because perhaps that harshness is what's going to lead us to make the changes that we have to make to make the world a very very good place um so I want you to think about it like this um at the end of one's life would you say it's only healthy if you look back and be like that was Gucci or could an older adult be like hypothetically let's say we all have souls right Eternal souls and a lot of souls come to planet Earth maybe most Souls come to planet Earth but others you know not so much like you can choose to come to planet Earth or not your soul is forever Eternal you can choose to come to earth or not um and let's say we know this for sure and some older adults at the end of their life would look at those souls and be like you know what I wouldn't recommend this Pit Stop um like all things considered this 80-year life it's a lot of hardship it was hard to experience my body decaying I don't think people are who they fully are on this planet there's a lot of judgment there's a lot of Wars I just if you can avoid this Pit Stop on your uh Eternal journey through existence I I don't know if you're to come to Earth you know I think looking at it that way it's uh easier to see how someone could come to that conclusion and it's not necessarily unhealthy as long as they could be like all right here's some of the pros though like um yeah it was hard to experience my body decaying but it was also really cool to experience how to build up my muscles and so on and so forth um and it's a little bit of a risk like maybe you get born in a body that already has some diseases that's really hard to deal with on the other hand you might be born with a body that can compete in the Olympics you know it's kind of a roll of the dice okay so some things to consider is again whether or not you think we can kind of like cycle to past um stages once we're past them and um and if you could kind of cure an unhealthy resolution and what actually counts as an unhealthy resolution someone who purely spirals upwards and can't even entertain the negative hypotheses is that person really healthy or is that person avoidant um and of course people who are purely negative I do agree with Ericson probably need some help some assistance to see the bright side as well um arguably what Ericson and I think in his own way Freud are really getting at is love it's a really squishy term for very malale dominated at least at the time field to focus on science and medical treatment so I think that if he was trying to purely Express himself he would have used words like love a lot more often all right so we touched on morality just a little bit in terms of how much it is ingrained in us from a young age we have these moral inclinations Colberg stages of moral reasoning try and understand how our morality develops across time gosh I hope you have a different moral code than you did when you were uh a little T so we have preconventional conventional and postconventional the most important thing that I want you to understand about these levels is it's not about the moral decisions that you come to Colberg doesn't supposed to know what the best moral decision is in fact the postconventional level um is supposed to be people who use wisdom for every single moral decision that they have to make they do not follow concrete rules and say this is always right and this is always wrong because they understand that the context matters a lot and again they're able to use wisdom and discretion um so it's not about like if you think that this is most moral then you are the most morally developed instead it's basically the degree to which people can explain why they believe certain things so the preconventional level all moral judgments are made kind of selfishly based on reward and punishments now very importantly every little kid starts off at this stage because it is pure survival if you get a cookie when you are a good girl or a good boy you need that cookie you need that cookie in your heart and soul you need that cookie to get up in the morning to get going to feel the Sunshine on on your skin so you're going to do whatever you got to do to get that cookie and you know that if you get in trouble you get your freedom taken away you get put in your room so every single person very importantly has a foundation of rewards and punishments and that is their moral code almost all little kids will say you shouldn't steal even if you're starving because you could go to jail they aren't able to understand that yeah but if you don't steal then maybe you die and maybe that's worse than going to jail arguable frankly um because all they know is like this action equals this consequence that's how their brain works at that age so all moral decisions that are purely about gaining Rewards or avoiding punishments are being made at the preconventional level the conventional level suggests that choices are based on rules and conventions so um just about everybody does who reaches a certain age let's say adolescence um reaches the conventional level of moral reasoning importantly if you uh read Colberg and look into it even more there's sub levels and each of these levels but we're just going to talk about the three basic ones um so just about everyone will reach the conventional level most people stop at the conventional level teenagers can actually reach the postconventional level but most people don't um so if you make it by the time you're a teenager you're probably kind of a natural when it comes to morality which again some people can be Naturals at morality uh to say that they are the better people is kind of harsh it's like saying if you just so happen to be born again with turnout not only are you the best ballerina but um that makes you a good person just because your brain is hardwired to look at Nuance that's basically what postconventional is um to say that you're a good person like that holds so much weight you know um but anyways uh the conventional level um all you understand that you have a Duty or an obligation so it's more of like feeling like a good boy and feeling like a good girl that people are in it for so you understand that the agie code of conduct is that an Aggie doesn't lie steal or cheat or tolerate those who do um which is kind of intolerant of us don't you think it's in it weird that the agie code of conduct is mostly about like what not to do but then of course we have a whole value set as well of things like you should do but anyways so somebody who was at the conventional level would purely turn in their friend who was cheating because that's what they're supposed to do they're not willing to hear that person out to hear why they're not willing to weigh the pros and cons of like well if I turn them in they get kicked out of school maybe I think you get like two strikes and you're out kind of a thing um so like is it really best for them if I get them kicked out of school or is there some other option instead it's like this is my duty and I'm going to perform my duty it's not about gaining a reward and it's not about avoiding punishment it's about this feeling this general idea of approval and Duty and obligation and in order to be in the conventional level you have to believe that the rules are righteous um so as soon as you're able to question whether the rules are righteous and be willing to at least sometimes say that they're not righteous that puts you at the postconventional level and this is a real struggle um and it's one of the uh Dimensions where religion really comes in because religion and some ways does ask people to support a Doctrine because almost every religion um is basing itself off of documents off of histories that happened a long time ago they's still alive in certain ways because there's certain like standards and Universal principles that you can apply to more modern day issues but the fact of the matter is the last time we had a big religious um kind of messianism sent from whatever God that um religion kind of believes in or non- Goods so in Buddhism they don't have like a god figure Instead This like Universal karmic force or whatever um but most of the time when those Messengers did come and represent this big shift in their religious tradition they were asking for change um in Hinduism the primary God God reincarnates every time Society needs to be schooled again um in Christianity and Judaism one of the reasons why Judaism didn't recognize Jesus as being part of their tradition is because the Messiah was supposed to come and kind of validate the way things are being done and Jesus came and was like no this is like some things are wrong change needs to occur and so it's interesting whether or not um religious individuals kind of hold on to that idea that sometimes it's necessary to question authority or if then he becomes the primary author it and so his words are now your duty and obligation or if you kind of try and be more like him and be willing to question some um kind of concrete rules that being said that puts it far too simply because the idea is like God or the Incarnation of God is different than who you are so when do you allow yourself that level of respect and Authority which you might perceive as being god-given Authority um versus when is the most moral thing to say like that person or that entity knows better than me and I am going to have the sense of Duty so all three of these levels are really necessary for even the preconventional level um so I often um will quote or kind of paraphrase um something Martin Luther King Jr said Dr Martin Luther King Jr said um which is that unjust laws you have a responsibility to not follow unjust laws there's a lot of unjust laws on the planet I promise you that um depending on which country you're in if there's just a ballerina who um she's Russian American she's been living in America for a long time and she um hadn't been back to Russia since the war started and she tried to go back and they searched her phone because you can do that in Russia and um she had donated $50 to Ukraine and they she's probably going to have to go work in a work camp for 15 years because that's treason um you know I don't know enough about the Ukraine Russia War plus God knows how much they're searching our phones to comment on who's right and who's wrong and that um dilemma but let's just assume that Ukraine is in need of support to decide to do that puts you in jail whether or not $50 made a difference in terms of the Ukraine struggle again is a question um so I'm not saying that the most moral people never um make decisions by avoiding punishment or seeking rewards instead truly postconventional level reasoning means that you can make decisions with wisdom you can decide this one is worth it this one is not worth it um because if everybody rebelled every time there was an injustice all the best people would be in jail um and then with the conventional level Sometimes the best thing you can do is recognize that rules exist for a reason and if we don't all participate in um our shared social kind of obligation to each other then Society doesn't even have a chance at existing and maybe Society is better than the chaos of the past that doesn't mean we can't create something better that's maybe a little bit more free um nowadays but um being able to acknowledge that rules exist for a reason is a totally valid approach and then the postconventional level you really have to be able to stand on your own two feet um a Hallmark of the postconventional level is this is overly simply put because the postconventional level basically means like you don't care what I have I mean you do care what I have to say you're able to listen but you're going to make choices for yourself but in general um a Hallmark of the postconventional level is not having concrete rules about absolutely anything so one of the most controversial um things that we could look at is like opinions on abortion don't shoot the messenger so postconventional level would argue that certain law laws and rules any type of laws moral laws whatever are arbitrary they have limits and you're really going to base your decision based on like your principles which means you're going to be willing to look at each situation differently so maybe at the end of the day you decide that all abortion is bad I don't like I said there's no moral decision that we're talking about but a very moral person would be able to really sit down and challenge their beliefs depending on the context so what if it was a rape for example are you still going to hold on to that belief what if the baby or the fetus is so sick that if the mom tries to give birth it there's no way it will survive the sorry there's no way they will survive the fetus because we don't know the the gender um there's no way the fetus Will Survive longer than a year um and it puts mom's life at Jeopardy too is it still every single time no absolutely not because this is the rule I'm going to follow maybe that's the most important thing to you and and it's not a conventional level um uh kind of stalemate instead it's like that's a decision that you have made but a Hallmark of the postconventional level is like let me let me look at the context um using my Universal kind of principles of Justice equality and kind of respect for for human life although um like we talked about with Ericson stages of development you know maybe it's okay to question so for example a lot of people kind of like avoid um their actual opinions on death they'll say in one conversation oh they're in a better place um and so death kind of is perceived as this like relief kind of a feeling but then in another conversation um you know death is seen as this absolute injust Justice maybe if somebody wants to choose for themselves whether or not they want to um continue to live with a terminal cancer diagnosis um or if they want to be able to choose death With Dignity I think we had that conversation before in some states you can choose to have physician assisted suicide if you have a terminal illness that is incredibly painful um so if in one conversation you say oh they're in a better place now you know it's merciful sometimes when people die but then in this other conversation on the other hand I'm not going to let you choose for yourself you know there's probably some contradictions there that need to be understood better you could still come to that conclusion but most people don't actually think about it which means they're not at this postconventional level um the very classic task they often give um to help understand this dilemma is uh I think I think the man's name was Hines so um this is just a thought experiment so let's say there's a man who has a wife and the wife is dying the druggist in town has a drug that could save the wife um so Hines the man uh wants to buy that medicine obviously the medicine is let's say $10,000 Hines saves up everything he can for many months and he comes up with $9,000 he goes to the and the his wife is about to die he goes to the druggist and goes please can I give you an IO I have $9,000 and the Dr says no I'm going to make my $10,000 and I don't want to hear another word from you and so Hines leaves so the Dilemma is should Hines steal the medication and again there is no correct answer there is only the level at which you're able to explain your response I recommend you pause and think about it I'm going to go through some common examples of um responses people give so little kids will say no because he'll go to jail and jail is the worst thing people of all ages will say no he shouldn't steal the drug because yeah he'd go to jail but also because we have a duty to not steal from each other stealing is wrong it breaks the social contract um if everybody stole every time they decided they needed something then we wouldn't be able to trust one another and it's more important to maintain Society than save this one person um other people will say that he should steal the drug because he has a duty to his wife so that's still at the conventional level because it's about Duty as a husband the postconventional level um would probably say no to stealing with a little bit more detail that basically by stealing that drug um he's taking it away from somebody else so it's less about um um you know a duty to up to be a good person and to not break that rule it's more like acknowledging that resources are sort of limited now a truly postconventional person would then be willing to question the society in which we exist because basically the meaning of that statement if you really think about it if you want to get the next level is that some lives are worth more than others that um if you have money you can pay for that drug and you should get the opportunity to pay for that drug because you have money it is absolutely putting a sense of worth on different like lives now because you can also question kind of like overarching respect for human life not that this is disrespectful to human life but you are allowed to question like the value of life if you're at this postconventional level it might be that somebody with a lot of money is more likely to have a decent quality of life whereas someone who can't even afford the medication that could save their life if that's all of their life savings that means she's going to overcome this terrible nearly terminal illness and then they're going to be totally poor the likelihood that her quality of life is going to be good is going to be really small on the other hand maybe that's really judgmental maybe most people's husbands would not be willing to steal money or to steal a drug or to earn all that money and maybe even if they are broke they're together which is a level of happiness that most people could never imagine other people at the postconventional level will say things like yes he should steal the money because his wife and his relationship matter so much more or they'll say things like well ask her first but then that's putting a lot of pressure on the wife like what are you supposed to do tell your husband to go steal that money and risk jail time because you want to live maybe that's not the most moral thing on the other hand maybe it's not moral to not ask the wife what she wants maybe she doesn't want to live longer um that would also be a totally valid response if you have an open mind um other people at the postconventional level say he should steal it but he should be willing to go to jail to steal it other people would be like so he's going to leave his wife alone after she just you know um uh overcame this terminal illness and for people who say that yeah he should steal but he should be willing to go to jail and he should go to jail most of the time they're making that decision because they're putting themselves in the shoes of hindes and what we've decided to call a good person is somebody who is self-sacrificing it is a beautiful thing to be willing to put other people first however again if every good person is that self-sacrificing every good person is going to be going through life with a giant boulder on their shoulders and perhaps that's no way to Build a Better World with the most kind of advanced moral people and addition let's think about how messed up that is if you're in the postconventional level that means you just said no the moral thing to do is to steal that um drug and I'm going to punish you for doing the morally correct thing that is the society that we live in many people will go to jail for either just trying to survive or generally doing the thing that is the best thing that they could do for themselves or their families um and maybe that's a problem that we live in that type of society and maybe that means we have to change society for the better that's really the postconventional level the post post postconventional Lev level is being able to see all of this and being able to question why this is such a conundrum so something to think about for all of your moral struggles have fun with it okay this is the last major Theory I'm really going to walk you through vot's sociocultural Theory vigotsky believed that development is both social and cultural my favorite way to think about voty is sociocultural theory is thinking about why we know things are true and who decides what is true and what is not so kind of like the postconventional moral Reon reasoning is like the postconventional intellectual reasoning taken to the extreme and I like to take it to the extreme just to open your mind it's basically assuming that everything you think you know is true was decided by culture culture decides what we need to learn and what is true and untrue and the way that is disseminated to us is socially we learn from other people if we it's kind of like anti-p um kids are little experimenters yeah we might be like driven towards learning but we would not learn without social facilitation and we learn through different interactions two in particular one is skilled adults so teachers and mentors and most um skilled adults teachers and mentors think about something called the zone of proximal development so you have these different levels of learner can do versus learner cannot do learner cannot do means like even like some a kiddo who can't even write numbers yet if I try and show them two digit adding they can't even write the number four yet I'd have to pick up their hands and write the mathematical problem for them they are not going to be able to add two digits and two digits together they they simply cannot they're not there yet um learner can do un AED means I give them twood digigit addition problems they do them all perfectly they don't need help they've um successfully accomplished that skill they could probably even teach others the zone of proximal development is this really cool position it's like the place you want to be and in all things once you reach a certain level of intellectual development I think this is pretty much where you are for just about everything you might need some background knowledge but like you can do anything with some guidance I think that is Gen genuinely true um so zone of proximal development in that two plus two digigit number plus two-digit number place is like the learner can maybe add the first two digits together let's say it's 6 + 5 but they don't remember what they're so so that's 11 right yeah good okay so they don't remember where to write the 11 they don't remember that you write one here and then this is the way I learned math anyway and then you um bring the one on top of the first digit right um so they forget how to do that part so all they need is the teacher to come over and be like Oh remember you carry the one so you put the one there and then you put the other one up there so with a little bit of and then you add one plus this digit plus this digit and then you're done so um they might need help on like three or four problems and by the fifth problem they can do it so that means they were in the zone of proximal development and with a little bit of scaffolding so you figure out how much help they need to be pushed in the right direction you don't do the problems for them that would not be learning instead how much how many hints do they need to be able to get to the position where they can also do it uned now importantly we also learn things through peers and sometimes we learn really bad behavior through peers um we learn things like bullying um I'm gonna so I have always found it really easy sorry my lizard is attached to my hair with a bobby pin I'm just gonna I've always found it really easy to fit in you know I've never really been like the weird person so I'm not entirely sure what it's like to be on the receiving end of bullying but here's what I do know is that most people who bully have experienced a lot of bullying themselves and knowing that can help us be a lot more compassionate towards other people so at what point if you see one person bullying another if you attack the moral character of that bully at what point is that helpful versus continuing to be harmful um I want you to really be to kind of observe how true this is I want you to look at people that you follow online and the comments section um some people do manage to Foster this really positive Community but even those it's so easy to suddenly experience this immediate shift for example there's a wonderful Creator called Elise Meyers she was so positive she was like the you can do it type of person she would share funny stories and most people loved her um but then the Israel and Palestine war broke out and suddenly she became this target from this large group of people um almost immediately after um that became more something that was in the news people wanted her to speak out about it now that is a struggle that's been going on for a very long time to be very informed about that struggle you should probably kind of like take a history class it takes a little bit of time to figure out your opinions and when she was uh really big on Tik Tock and most Tik Tok videos are 3 minutes long and everyone's looking for a reason to hate you it's really difficult to figure out what you should be saying so people started commenting on her videos um saying that she was an irresponsible bad person for not speaking out not using her platform for good so much so that they bullied her off of Tik to and now all of her videos are gone um so ironically people who were part of that movement who were were asking people to speak out they considered the people with big um platforms kind of bullies for not being willing to speak out against Injustice and if you think that they are wrong to be doing that basically um you should question whether there's ever been a period in history where you would have considered it to be immoral to not speak out about something so I went to a very Jewish school um I'm not actually Jewish but I did go to a very um a college that was seeped in Jewish um history and Jewish tradition and so I took a lot of classes on the Holocaust for example and a lot of times we look back on that period because there's a little bit of distance we think how could it not have been the case that everybody was talking about how bad that was and if people had all gathered together and decided that obviously this is wrong maybe history would have turned out differently so a lot of people are looking at the Israel and Palestine conflict and saying like it's here again and why aren't you speaking out about it so that's not necessarily an evil stance to take but it's a it can be sometimes a really fine line between taking a moral stance and then hating on other people and I I promise you there are no simple answers and I'd have to make an entire new video about it so I'm not going to instead I'm just going to point out that sometimes it can be really hard to tell the difference between something like light teasing and actual bullying um bullying whether it happens online or in person essentially strips that person of their identity because we supposed to learn from other people that's the whole point of otsky we're supposed to be scaffolded in the direction of knowledge by adults and by skilled peers and when our peers tell us that we are nothing that we are embarrassing that we are bad you're you are trained to believe that it's not a matter of belief it feels like fact because that basically is the vigotsky theory so if a large enough group of people without having enough support of your own tells you consistently that you are just kind of like this reject full easyto reject person you your identity gets stripped from you everything you thought you believed about yourself is taken away um on the professor side this is the best example I have not looking for sympathy but truly um on the professor side right students we're supposed to see you guys as little people but that's really humanizing however I understand why professors take on that type of mentality um that like the opinion of the little people do not matter to me because truthfully you guys can be mean um there was one semester where for an entire weekends all the comments are gone now because they were so horrendous that the website decided to take them down Ray my professor was just negative comment after negative comment after negative comment really cruel things things like she's not really nice she's actually pretentious bullying for I will never forget that moment because it was this lesson come to life for an entire weekend a random weekend not even at the end of the semester I had to confront the very real possibility that I'm not actually a good professor which had become a really important part of my identity now I'm an adult and um I do have access to the opinion of like you know F these kids kind of a thing um flip these kids these flipping kids because this is a family show um but if you are a developing teenager and you don't have any sense of identity yet really you are building it from the ground up that becomes your most proximal truth about yourself and it's why people slowly hide themselves away and why we're probably right now living in a society of people mostly just trying to get through life without being attacked by other individuals on the other hand if you manage to find your community of people who validate you who tell you that you do matter who tell you that you do love that you are loved suddenly um parts of yourself come to life that you could have never imagined because they were just hiding in the shadows of your own imagination of your own hope of who you are so when you find that group that does send all of those really positive comments if you look online yeah you see a lot of hater aid but it can't be that bad because so many people continue to use technology and do use it in order to conform to what they think other people believe they should be doing but when you receive that validation it doesn't just tell you that that particular behavior is okay those comments are often like you're beautiful you're so smart you're so cool which gives you more access to more behaviors and hopefully a better sense of individuality it is not the case that technology is purely for the Mindless drones of society it gives people a sense of self and a sense of confidence but it can also take it away um in addition things like peer pressure so when we think about peer pressure it's really easy to think about things like drinking right like uh don't get peer pressured into drinking because drinking is this bad behavior what about the really smart kids who get peer pressured into signing up for a bunch of extracurriculars until they burn themselves out we wouldn't really call that peer pressure because if it went well then basically you would have been encouraged to push yourself farther to get into the best possible school so is it only peer pressure of behavior is certainly bad when it comes to drinking behaviors for instance okay we think about how teens get peer pressured into that bad behavior and we're willing to call that a bad behavior even though if literally went a couple miles up to Canada it would be legal um so again is that law totally just we did have a whole prohibition period in America where everyone decided it was ridiculous that they weren't letting people drink alcohol um we would not have any alcohol at all if it wen't for that period to some people that feels like a prison to others maybe they think the world would be better if we weren't drinking um so on the other hand so we think about that Community teens who drink or people who drink before they're 21 as being like the bad kids but then the students or the people who don't participate in that behavior who look at that Community as being bad are they actually being the bullies for instance on Tik Tok right right now there's a lot of I guess the University of Alabama has like a really big sorority system I don't know but so there's a bunch of people right now who are showing their like outfits of the day and they kind of fit the mold of like the Mean Girls kind of a Vibe so much even though they're not being mean they're literally just showing their outfits but the they look like people who would be mean they look like people who would bully other people and I guess the sority system um can be really harsh on anyone who doesn't fit in again can't possibly relate to that um I have to oh my alien earrings they're just they start to really bother me um so people online will take their videos of them showing their outfits and break it down by cost which doesn't seem to be bullying but basically the idea is kind of like Rich Bratz sort of a Vibe so is that bullying but is that okay because basically those people are going to not accept anyone who doesn't fit their mold it is a really tough World actually I ended up going back to those Tik toks about sorority Rush week nice especially on the sorority Pages videos most comments are overwhelmingly nice um and really supportive and even the ones where another individual is listing the prices of the outfits um most of the comments are commenting on how beautiful they look there are some that point out how outrageous that is and unfair and class Wars and things like that which perhaps is a valid critique of society and they do a pretty good job of not making about the actual girls um on the other hand then you keep scrolling and you get to like bar stool and that's when all the haters come in and basically that's why Humanity has become so uh group oriented because you have a group you have a community you build a sense of trust you build a sense of love and you want that to be reality you want everyone to see you that way however the truth is if another group comes in especially if think that you are taking up their resources or if you are potentially a threat to them then that group becomes your enemy and especially in teenage years as Freud points out there's this Reawakening that happens which makes the boys and girls go from SEC separate groups to really wanting to find a community within each other and the truth of the matter is we are a species which means we are driven to procreate which means that everything in our body tells us find a mate or the species die of course this isn't true for everybody because there's also asexual individuals in the lgbtq community but even the lgbtq community the idea is you reach a certain age and you feel this desire to give back um this generativity effect so perhaps things like um adopting again a lot of confusion and a lot of like Conformity so thinking about the girl side if you're a girl side observing the culture that we say is man culture it's a lot of objectifying women the truth is that most men want to be respectful individuals and do not have this festering hatred of women that is anything more than the fact that boys and girls tend to be reared apart and during this latency period of Freud's According to Freud psychosexual stages um during that latency period both genders are trying to kind of avoid the other one because they're not at their it's not time for them they are ill prepared to court one another and so you kind of avoid that which you want the most and that leads to like mounting frustrations which happens on both sides the truth is that most men do not have this festering desire to be brutal towards women however what is true is the fact that for some people that frustration does boil over into violence that is so scary that it feels invalidating to women and the women struggle if you point out that probably most men want a respectful good relationship just like most people want a respectful good relationship whether that be that's a romantic relationship or friendship or what have you so we tend to just like if you look online most comments are neutral or kind most people who are watching those Tik Tok videos like they're watching people that they like with the exception of a couple moments in time where somebody posts something things like particularly toned de but the fact that there are negative comments and those negative comments are so brutal and they go right to the heart of your insecurities that makes the mean comments stand out just like in Man versus women culture when men cultures um violence becomes the main point of conversation that's so scary to women that then it feels like that's the entirety of masculinity culture when that just isn't the truth and so it's really hard to figure out do we talk about the problems with one gender or the other like women's tendency to be caddy or gossip do we focus on those negatives in order to fix them or if we only focus on the negatives if we make it seem like masculinity culture is all about hating women or feminism is all about hating men um if we phrase it like that sometimes that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but if we don't talk about the problems then we have no opportunity to make better and that is the struggle so women teenage girls start to receive the message that if you are willing to be like promiscuous for instance then you're more likely to be accepted by this other group on the other hand so that would be kind of conforming to one particular image on the other hand here's the impossibility of culture if your behavior is too threatening towards your fellow women then women might actually objectify you even more and kind of like bad word trigger warning um kind of shaming type culture yes of course the gentlemen the guys do that um but if if you decide to like well if you can't beat them then join them kind of a deal or you're just trying to live your life the way you want to live your life then suddenly people of your own Community Exile you and there's nothing worse than Exile then on so you kind of can't win right you give the guys what they want because you literally need them in order to continue on the species and then the girl sort of hate you on the other hand and the men are always kind of disrespectful is what Society tells us because on the man's side on the other hand on the man's side on the other hand you have the girls literally watching shows like the notebook and or movies like The Notebook and posting about it and so they say they want that type of man that dude whoever uh literally hangs off of a ferris wheel in order to get homeg girl to go on a date with him while she's on a date with somebody else meanwhile in man culture if you are too overt with your uh intentions a lot of the girls will actually call you a creep which means that by trying to be the type of man who pursues well and with persistence that's like the main character in those movies you might actually be labeled as a creep which is not just um uh Exile and like a we don't want you in this reject full kind of way but kind of um like again kind of morally ambiguous like if you get put in the category with creeps then you get put in the category of men who would um make disgusting power hungry types of decision ISS towards women so these two groups that are quite different and conforming to different standards of how they think they're supposed to behave are trying really hard to combine efforts and it's sort of um a lot of chaos of course once we get older it's quite possible to observe all of this and make better healthy decisions and be more considerate about the struggles on either side however by that time you've already had a couple traumas and you've already been kind of like programmed to see your group and the opposite group in one way or another and then the conversations that occur online either reinforce your preconceived notions or sort of change them I so a lot of my students um are really kind enough to share their religious beliefs with me and so I started going to church with a former student and learned a lot about um Christianity over the course of a long period of time um and then another student was um observing Ramadan last semester and so she was kind enough to share the Quran with me and I I tried to do the fasting thing I failed but um I did keep up with a fair amount of the readings and gosh that was really difficult that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do is to go to church on Sundays and be like this is the truth and anyone who denies that is sort of not part of this community um and then be reading a book on the other hand that's sort of saying the same thing about this group um so even some beliefs that gen genuinely make people lives better but still do create divisions between people the big question nowadays should be like what do we do with that if there is one truth when it comes to a religious belief or a political belief or a NA national belief like which nation is correct in this struggle if it's true that there is a truth then you should pursue these different um potential Pathways but if it's possible that no group is 100% correct it's going to be really important to figure out like put our weapons down and come to some coherent all-encompassing truth but if you've been taught that this group is good and this group is bad or this group is right and this group is wrong then to do that is to um betray your community and that is the struggle that humanity is facing right now the good news is that sometimes we learn from peers uh really good role models we can learn how to treat each other better and kind of make being good cool again there's all sorts of Tik tokers who despite the haters and the haters can be awful oh my goodness I watch some Tik tokers I'm like how could anybody possibly hate them and then I go to their comment section and it's so mean it can be so mean there's so much good too there's a lot of really good content online there's a lot of really kind people um so I recommend you consider the degree to which each of these influences you and try to continue to sort of choose for yourself Braun from Brunner I'm not going to walk you through the entire Theory but um it's a great one to look into if you liked this lecture and want even more information it basically is just this uh way of diagramming out how influential the different systems are so you have the individual in the middle and each of their micro system um communities will directly influence them so what you learn in school directly influences who you are your home life directly influences who you are and then the different or the different relationships in your micr system kind of communicate with one another so if the school has a meeting with the parents then suddenly school and home aren't so separate and they're going to start working together to influence the individual then you have exosystem the stuff that you don't even think influences you so if you go into um child counseling like I said Sometimes the best thing you can do is influence the parents instead of directly influencing the kid um and then you start to learn like oh I want Mom to be able to help with their homework but it turns out Mom's work is insane mom's work requires her to work you know 12-hour days maybe that's not so practical after all and that is influencing the kiddo and so maybe the best thing is to find a great babysitter who becomes kind of part of the family and then in the macro system is the shared cultural values beliefs customs and laws the things that influence all of us a whole lot and we don't even realize it because we can't point to particular individuals who are the cause of our problems it's way easier to blame mom than it is to blame the social social structure in which social context in which we exist okay um this is the first chapter that I have this included if you are taking my exams are not very standardized and this is the last chapter before exam one my exams are not very standardized they're meant to continue The Learning Experience they're meant to be fun um and very applicable to your real life and I don't make you memorize things if you're taking the MCAT eventually you will have to memorize things if you're taking it four years from now it pro I don't know the utility and memorizing this stuff now but at least you know uh collecting some information might be valuable one of my favorite students who took three of my classes recently took his MCAT and got a perfect score in the psychology section um so basically I took some pages from MCAT study guides and at the end of each chapter um I have relevant terms that you that often show up on the MCAT that you should keep in mind maybe um make a little notebook of all the different things okay have a great day