The Forces of Development, Normative and Non-Normative Influences.
According to Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields (2019), people have interactive forces that
form our development, namely: the biological forces, which entail that our development
is greatly influenced by how our body chemistry (genetics) is made up, as well as our
health related aspects. Examples include, puberty, menopause, as well as our nervous
system. Secondly, the psychological forces, which involve the inner perceptions,
emotions, thoughts and personality traits that affect our development and define us as
individuals (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2019, p.8). Thirdly, our sociocultural
forces, entailing that the societies that we are living in, our cultures, social interactions
and ethnic backgrounds influence and contextualize our development such as forming
our beliefs, religion, etc., as explained by Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields (2019). Finally,
the life-cycle factors, which reveal variances in the ways that an individual is affected by
an occasion or by the biopsychosocial factors, depending on the life cycle stage in which
they are in (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2019, p.8). Built from the concept of cohorts
(groups of people born within the same time span), three types of influences that interact
to produce developmental change over the life span were identified- Cavanaugh &
Blanchard-Fields (2019) stated that the level to which the abovementioned interactive
forces are common or exclusive to one’s development are determined by the following,
firstly, normative age-graded influences, in simple terms- are the normal experiences
that occur at a particular age that mark an important transformation in one’s life and most
of the time- such events are ritualized, such as couples normally getting married in their
twenties and celebrating at their wedding, a woman starting menopause- which marks the
According to Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields (2019), people have interactive forces that
form our development, namely: the biological forces, which entail that our development
is greatly influenced by how our body chemistry (genetics) is made up, as well as our
health related aspects. Examples include, puberty, menopause, as well as our nervous
system. Secondly, the psychological forces, which involve the inner perceptions,
emotions, thoughts and personality traits that affect our development and define us as
individuals (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2019, p.8). Thirdly, our sociocultural
forces, entailing that the societies that we are living in, our cultures, social interactions
and ethnic backgrounds influence and contextualize our development such as forming
our beliefs, religion, etc., as explained by Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields (2019). Finally,
the life-cycle factors, which reveal variances in the ways that an individual is affected by
an occasion or by the biopsychosocial factors, depending on the life cycle stage in which
they are in (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2019, p.8). Built from the concept of cohorts
(groups of people born within the same time span), three types of influences that interact
to produce developmental change over the life span were identified- Cavanaugh &
Blanchard-Fields (2019) stated that the level to which the abovementioned interactive
forces are common or exclusive to one’s development are determined by the following,
firstly, normative age-graded influences, in simple terms- are the normal experiences
that occur at a particular age that mark an important transformation in one’s life and most
of the time- such events are ritualized, such as couples normally getting married in their
twenties and celebrating at their wedding, a woman starting menopause- which marks the
