Question

Social Change Within Developmental Psychology

Throughout this course, you may have gravitated to certain stages of development and certain research topics. Perhaps you found cognitive development during early childhood particularly appealing. Perhaps you are interested in the process of identity development during adolescence and the influence of culture. Maybe you want to learn more about how older adults cope with Alzheimer’s disease. There are endless questions and endless opportunities to affect change, improve human development, and positively impact the overall quality of life.

Take your curiosities and interests a step further and generate some ideas for positive social change in those areas. Do not limit yourself to what your current resources or capacities are; if you had ample resources at your disposal, what would you want to do to affect positive social change?

Think about a research topic that involves lifespan development and how it could contribute to positive social change.

1. Write about a description of a research topic that involves lifespan development and explain how it could contribute to positive social change.

2. Then, explain the actions you could take to bring about social change for that research topic possibility. Be specific.

Answer 1

Gender neutral play for children

1. Children at a very early age are bought certain kinds of toys based on their gender, and also often segregated while playing based on their gender. This research aims at providing the same toys for girls and boys, also playing the same game regardless of their gender. Parents will be given counseling regarding encouraging to treat their children same with regards to their play behavior. The attitudes of the parents towards gender stereotypes can be measure pre and post the research. The play behavior of both the sexes will observed before the intervention and after the intervention.