Essays
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An Evolutionary Perspective on Developmental Plasticity - Hartman, Sarah
In this essay, we advance the argument that variations in developmental plasticity should be treated as an individual‐difference construct in research on environmental influences on human development. As guided by the diathesis‐stress framework, past research has focused mainly on the development of dysfunction and negative outcomes in “vulnerable” individuals and the absence of such effects in “resilient” ones in response to adverse developmental experiences and environmental exposures. An evolutionary perspective challenges this traditional and prevailing framework for understanding person‐X‐environment interaction, leading to the view that there are individual differences in developmental plasticity, with those individuals most susceptible to the negative effects of adverse experiences also most likely to benefit from positive ones. Evidence consistent with this view is summarized and directions for future research are outlined. -
Expertise - Eyal, Gil
The main claim of the essay is that expertise is better understood neither as a set of skills that experts possess nor as a social attribution, but as a historically specific way in which we currently talk about the intersection, articulation, and friction between professions, science and technology on the one hand, and law and democratic politics on the other. It is shown that talk in terms of expertise is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it is claimed that it reflects not the rise of the “expert society,” but its crisis, namely, as long as it was fairly clear who the experts were, and how to recognize them there was little discussion of expertise, but once the number of contenders for expert status has increased and the bases for their claims have become more heterogeneous; once the struggles between these would‐be experts intensified; expertise became problematized because the question was how to determine whose claim is legitimate. After surveying some of the current debates about the nature and character of expertise, the essay concludes by suggesting that the more fruitful approach is to treat expertise in an open‐ended nominalist manner as everything that is necessary to take into account when one seeks to give a description of the capacity to accomplish a relevant task, that is, of everything that is necessary in order for a particular expert statement or performance to be produced, repeated, and disseminated. -
Four Psychological Perspectives on Creativity - Damian, Rodica Ioana
Creativity is a unique feature of human thinking and behavior that is essential to our species' survival, future progress, and even the rise and fall of civilizations. To understand this highly complex phenomenon, we need to adopt an interdisciplinary and multimethod approach. Because creativity happens at many different levels both intra‐ and interindividual, the psychological science of creativity currently lacks a strong paradigmatic coherence. In this essay, we review creativity research from four different scientific perspectives: cognitive, differential, developmental, and social, and attempt to provide a unified overarching picture. We present foundational and cutting‐edge research addressing the following questions: (i) What cognitive processes are involved in creative thinking; (ii) What personality traits are characteristic of the creative person; (iii) What developmental factors lead to creative achievement; and (iv) What social factors foster creativity? We identify current debate issues and propose ways to promote unity and coherence in creativity research across psychological subfields. We offer a clear definition of creativity and identify promising theoretical models that could help integrate and direct future research. -
Insight - Erickson, Brian
Insight, also known as the Aha phenomenon, is the sudden awareness of the solution to a problem. In contrast, analysis is problem solving by consciously and deliberately manipulating the elements of a problem. The Gestalt psychologists began studying insight about a century ago. On the basis of their research with complex “insight problems,” they characterized insight as a reinterpretation or restructuring of one's representation of a stimulus or situation after a period of unconscious processing. The emergence of cognitive psychology later during the twentieth century led to another period of advancement in insight research during the 1980s and 1990s. This work further characterized the unconscious nature of the processing leading up to an insight. More recently, the development of techniques for measuring and manipulating brain function has sparked a new renaissance in insight research. Cognitive neuroscience research has highlighted the key role of the right hemisphere and has discovered a number of neural precursors to insight, including its origins in patterns of resting‐state brain activity and in neural preparatory activity immediately before a problem is presented. The latest trend is work aimed at developing techniques to enhance insight, including recent research showing that direct stimulation of the right hemisphere can facilitate the solving of insight problems. Cognitive neuroscience approaches should continue to fuel rapid advances and may lead to the development of practical technologies for insight enhancement. -
Youth Entrepreneurship - Damon, William
Entrepreneurship is critical to job creation and economic growth in the United States and abroad; however, interest in pursuing entrepreneurial careers is on the decline among young people today. As a means of designing programs that effectively encourage and prepare young people to pursue entrepreneurial careers, this essay calls for increased focus on how entrepreneurs develop. An understanding of the experiences, opportunities, and interests that lead to successful entrepreneurship is needed. To that end, this essay, in addition to addressing leading process‐oriented definitions of entrepreneurship and briefly reviewing relevant empirical studies, outlines three promising areas of research on youth entrepreneurship. First, researchers have becoming increasingly interested in entrepreneurial purposes. Recent research finds that at least some young people seek out entrepreneurial careers as a means of applying their skills and talents to create organizations or businesses that solve personally meaningful problems in the broader world. This leads to the second emerging area of interest in youth entrepreneurship: the distinction between social and business entrepreneurship. The growth of new businesses and organizations that are at once highly profitable and at the same time exist to address social problems has blurred this distinction. Third, researchers are increasingly interested in identifying ways of effectively fostering entrepreneurial interests. This essay highlights key issues regarding the role that educational experiences and institutional support play in supporting the development of successful entrepreneurs.