PowerPoint slides prepared by Leonard R.

Mendola, PhD
Touro College 1
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 Chapter 2: Puberty, Health, and Biological Foundations
Outline

• Puberty
– Determinants of Puberty
– Growth Spurt
– Sexual Maturation
– Secular Trends in Puberty
– Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
– Are Puberty’s Effects Exaggerated?

• Health
– Adolescence: A Critical Juncture in Health
– Emerging Adults’ Health
– Nutrition
– Exercise and Sports
– Sleep

• Evolution, Heredity, and Environment

– The Evolutionary Perspective
– The Genetic Process
– Heredity-Environment Interaction
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 Preview

• Puberty’s changes are perplexing to adolescents

• These changes bring forth doubts, fears, and anxieties,
most adolescents eventually overcome them
• Many aspects of pubertal change will be explored in this
chapter, from growth spurts and sexual maturation to the
psychological aspects of puberty
• Other topics related to adolescent physical development
will also be examined, including health and the roles of
evolution, heredity, and environment in adolescent
development

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 Puberty

• Determinants of Puberty • Sexual Maturation

– Heredity • Secular Trends in Puberty
– Hormones • Psychological Dimensions
– Weight, Body Fat, and Leptin of Puberty
– Weight at Birth and in Infancy – Body Image
– Sociocultural and Environmental – Hormones and Behavior
Factors
– Early and Late Maturation
• Growth Spurt
• Are Puberty’s Effects
Exaggerated?

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 Puberty

• The period of rapid physical maturation involving

hormonal and bodily changes that takes place primarily
in early adolescence
• While puberty is thought of as the most important marker
for the beginning of adolescence, for virtually everyone,
puberty ends long before adolescence is exited

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 Determinants of Puberty

• We do not know precisely what initiates puberty, a

number of complex factors are involved:
– Changes in the endocrine system
– Weight
– Body fat
– Leptin

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 Determinants of Puberty

• We do not know if these complex factors are a cause or a

consequence of puberty (Susman & Dorn, 2009)
• There is increased interest in the role that birth weight,
rapid weight gain in infancy, obesity, and sociocultural
factors might play in pubertal onset and characteristics

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 Heredity
• Puberty is not an environmental accident
– Programmed into the genes of every human being is the
timing for the emergence of puberty (Mueller & others,
2010)
• Recently, scientists have begun to conduct molecular
genetic studies in an attempt to identify specific genes
that are linked to the onset and progression of puberty
(He & others, 2010; Paris & others, 2010)

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 Heredity
• Puberty takes place between about 9 and 16 years of age
for most individuals
• Environmental factors can also influence its onset and
duration (Belsky & others, 2010)

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 Hormones

• Hormones: Powerful chemical substances secreted by

the endocrine glands and carried throughout the body by
the bloodstream (Divall & Radovick, 2008)

Androgens: The main class of male sex

hormones

Estrogens: The main class of female sex

hormones

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 Hormones
• Testosterone is an androgen
– Plays an important role in male pubertal development
– Rising testosterone levels are associated with a number of
physical changes in boys:
• Development of external genitals
• Increase in height
• Voice changes (Campbell & Mbizo, 2006; Goji & others, 2009)
• Also linked to sexual desire and activity (Cameron, 2004)

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 Hormones

• Estradiol is an estrogen
– Plays an important role in female pubertal development
– As estradiol levels rise changes in girls occur:
• Breast development
• Uterine development
• Skeletal changes
– The identity of hormones that contribute to sexual desire
and activity in adolescents is less clear for girls than it is
for boys (Cameron, 2004)

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 Figure 2.1 – Hormone Levels by Sex & Pubertal
Stage for Testosterone & Estradiol

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 The Endocrine System
• Puberty onset involves the activation of the
hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis
– Hypothalamus
• Structure in the higher portion of the brain that monitors eating,
drinking and sex
– Pituitary gland
• The endocrine gland that regulates other glands and secretes FSH
and LH
– Thyroid gland
• Interacts with the pituitary gland to influence growth and skeletal
maturation
– Gonads
• The sex glands – testes in males, ovaries in females – that secrete
sex hormones 14
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 Figure 2.2 - The Major Endocrine
Glands Involved in Pubertal Change

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 Figure 2.3 - The Feedback System of Sex
Hormones

LH-RF (luteinizing hormone-releasing

factor) and FSH-RF (follicle-
stimulating hormone-releasing
factor) stimulate pituitary gland

LH (luteinizing hormone) and FSH

(follicle- stimulating hormone)
stimulate gonads

Gonads: testes in males, ovaries

in females

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 Adrenarche and Gonadarche

• Adrenarche involves hormonal changes in the adrenal

glands
– These changes occur surprisingly early, from about 6 to 9
years of age in girls and about one year later in boys before
what is generally considered the beginning of puberty
(Dorn & others, 2006)
• During adrenarche and continuing through puberty, the
adrenal glands secrete adrenal androgens, such as
dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) (Miller, 2008)

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 Adrenarche and Gonadarche
• Gonadarche
– Follows adrenarche by about two years; is the period most
people think of as puberty
– Involves the maturation of:
• Primary sexual characteristics: Ovaries in females, testes in males
• Secondary sexual characteristics: Pubic hair, breast, and genital
development (Dorn & others, 2006)
• “The hallmark of gonadarche is reactivation of the hypothalamic-
pituitary-gonadal axis (HPG). . . . The initial activation of the HPG
axis was during the fetal and neonatal period” (Dorn & others, 2006,
p. 35)

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 Adrenarche and Gonadarche
– In the United States, the gonadarche period begins at
approximately 9 to 10 years of age in non-Latina white girls,
and 8 to 9 years in African American girls (Herman-
Giddens, Kaplowitz, & Wasserman, 2004)
– In boys, gonadarche begins at about 10 to 11 years of age

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 Adrenarche and Gonadarche

• Menarche
– The first menstrual period
– Occurs in mid- to late-gonadarche in girls
• Spermarche
– The first ejaculation of semen
– Occurs in early- to mid-gonadarche in boys

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 Weight, Body Fat, and Leptin
• Higher weight, especially obesity, is linked to earlier
pubertal development (Kaplowitz, 2009)
– A body weight of 106 +/- 3 pounds may trigger menarche
and the end of the pubertal growth spurt (Friesch, 1984)
– This specific weight target is not well documented (Susman,
2001)
• Other scientists have hypothesized that the onset of
menarche is influenced by the percentage of body fat in
relation to total body weight
– A minimum of 17 percent of a girl’s body weight must be
comprised of body fat
– As with the weight target, this percentage has not been
consistently verified
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 Weight, Body Fat, and Leptin
– In boys undernutrition may delay puberty (Susman, Dorn,
and Schiefelbein, 2003)
– The hormone leptin may signal the beginning and
progression of puberty

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 Weight at Birth and in Infancy

• There is increasing evidence for a link between puberty’s

onset and characteristics and birth weight and weight
gain during infancy (Ong, 2010)
– Low birth-weight girls experience menarche
approximately 5 to 10 months earlier than normal birth-
weight girls
– Low birth-weight boys are at risk for small testicular
volume during adolescence (Ibanez & de Zegher, 2006)

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 Weight at Birth and in Infancy

• A recent research review concluded that early growth

acceleration soon after birth that reaches a peak in the
first 2 to 4 years of life predicts very early pubertal onset
for girls (Papadimitriou & others, 2010)

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 Sociocultural and Environmental Factors

• Recent research indicates that cultural variations and

early experiences may be related to earlier pubertal onset
– Adolescents in developed countries and large urban areas
reach puberty earlier than their counterparts in less
developed countries and rural areas (Graham, 2005)
– Children who have been adopted from developing
countries to developed countries often enter puberty earlier
than their counterparts who continue to live in developing
countries (Teilmann & others, 2002)

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 Sociocultural and Environmental Factors

– African American females enter puberty earlier than Latina

and non-Latina females, and African American males enter
puberty earlier than non-Latino males (Biro & others,
2006; Talpade, 2008)
• Early experiences that are linked to earlier pubertal onset
include adoption, father absence, low socioeconomic
status, family conflict, maternal harshness, and child
maltreatment (Arim & others, 2011; Deardorff & others,
2011; Ellis & others, 2011)

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 Growth Spurt

• Because growth slows throughout childhood, puberty

brings forth the most rapid increases in growth since
infancy
• Occurs approximately two years earlier for girls (age 9)
than boys (age 11) on average
• The peak of pubertal change occurs at 11½ years for girls
and 13½ years for boys
• Girls increase in height about 3½ inches per year; boys,
about 4 inches

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 Growth Spurt

• Weight gain follows roughly the same developmental

timetable as height gain
– Girls gain an average of 18 pounds in one year at roughly
12 years of age; boys gain an average of 20 pounds at
roughly 13 to 14 years of age
• Girls gain hip width while boys gain shoulder width

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 Growth Spurt

• The later growth spurt of boys produces a greater leg

length in boys than in girls
• Boys’ facial structure becomes more angular during
puberty, whereas girls’ facial structure becomes rounder
and softer

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 Figure 2.4 - Pubertal Growth Spurt

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 Sexual Maturation

• Male pubertal characteristics develop in this order:

– Increased penis and testicle size
– Appearance of straight pubic hair
– Minor voice change
– First ejaculation (spermarche)
– Appearance of kinky pubic hair
– Onset of maximum growth
– Growth of armpit hair
– More detectable voice changes
– Growth of facial hair 31
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 Sexual Maturation

• Female pubertal characteristics develop in this order:

– Breast development
– Growth of pubic hair
– Growth of armpit hair
– Height gain
– Hips become wider than shoulders
– First menstruation (menarche)
– No voice changes occur that are comparable to those in
pubertal males

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 Figure 2.5 - Normal Range and Average Development of
Sexual Characteristics in Males and Females

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 Sexual Maturation

• There may be wide individual variations in the onset and

progression of puberty
• Precocious puberty: The very early onset and rapid
progression of puberty
– Characteristics of precocious puberty (Blakemore & others,
2009, p. 58):
• Pubertal onset that occurs before the age of 8 in girls and before the
age of 9 in boys (Dorn & Biro, 2011)
• Occurs approximately 10 times more often in girls than in boys
• Treated by medically suppressing gonadotropic secretions, which
temporarily stops pubertal change (Kaplowitz, 2009)

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 Figure 2.7 - Median Ages at Menarche in Selected Northern
European Countries and the United States from 1845 to 1969

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 Secular Trend

• Recent analyses call into question blanket statements that

puberty has continued to rise in recent years
– A panel of experts recently examined pubertal timing data
and agreed that breast development and menarche occurred
earlier in girls from 1940 to 1994 but that current data are
insufficient to conclude that earlier pubertal development
took place for boys across this time frame (Euling & others,
2008)
– A recent research review concluded that puberty does seem
to be occurring only in overweight girls but that obesity
delays puberty onset in boys (Walvoord, 2010)

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 Psychological Dimensions of Puberty

• Body image
– Adolescents are preoccupied with their bodies (Lawler &
Nixon, 2010; Markey, 2010)
– Gender differences
• In general, throughout puberty girls are less happy with their bodies
and have more negative body images than boys (Crespo & others,
2010)
• As pubertal change proceeds, girls often become more dissatisfied with
their bodies, probably because their body fat increases (Markey, 2010;
Yuan, 2010)
• In contrast, boys become more satisfied as they move through puberty,
probably because their muscle mass increases

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 Psychological Dimensions of Puberty

• Body art
– An increasing number of adolescents and college students are
obtaining tattoos and getting parts of their body pierced
(Beznos & Coates, 2007; Mayers & Chiffriller, 2008)
– Researchers do not agree whether body art is used to express
individuality and self-expression or rebellion

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 Psychological Dimensions of Puberty

• Hormones and behavior

– Hormonal factors are thought to account for at least part of the
increase in negative and variable emotions that characterize
adolescents (Vermeersch & others, 2008)
• In boys, higher levels of androgens are associated with violence and
acting-out problems (Van Goozen & others, 1998)
• There is also some indication that increased estrogen levels are linked
to depression in adolescent girls (Blakemore, Berenbaum, & Liben,
2009)

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 Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
– Hormonal factors alone are not responsible for adolescent
behavior
• Hormonal activity is influenced by many environmental factors,
including parent-adolescent relationships, stress, eating patterns,
sexual activity, and depression can activate or suppress various aspects
of the hormone system (DeRose & Brooks-Gunn, 2008)

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 Psychological Dimensions of Puberty

• Early and late maturation

– When adolescents mature earlier or later than their peers, they
often perceive themselves differently (de Rose & others,
2011; Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Negriff,
Susman, & Trickett, 2011)
• The Berkeley Longitudinal Study found that early-maturing boys
perceived themselves more positively and had more successful peer
relations than did late-maturing boys.
• The findings for early-maturing girls were similar but not as strong as
for boys (Jones, 1965)
– An increasing number of researchers have found that early
maturation increases girls’ vulnerability to a number of
problems (de Rose & others, 2011; Graber, Nichols, &
Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Negriff, Susman, & Trickett, 2011) 41
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 Are Puberty’s Effects Exaggerated?

• Puberty affects some adolescents more strongly than others,

and some behaviors more strongly than others
• If we look at overall development and adjustment over the
human life span, puberty and its variations have less
dramatic effects than is commonly thought for most
individuals
• Besides the biological influences on adolescent
development, cognitive and social or environmental
influences also shape who we become (de Rose & Brooks-
Gunn, 2008; Sontag & others, 2008)
– Singling out biological changes as the dominant influence
during adolescence may not be wise
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 Health

• Adolescence: A Critical Juncture in Health

– Risk-Taking Behavior
– Health Services
– Leading Causes of Death
• Emerging Adults’ Health
• Nutrition
• Exercise and Sports
– Exercise
– Positive Benefits of Exercise in Adolescence
– Role of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in Adolescent Exercise
– Sports
• Sleep
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 Health

• Adolescence: A critical juncture in health

– Adolescence is a critical juncture in the adoption of behaviors
that are relevant to health (Fatusi & Hindin, 2010)
– Many of the behaviors that are linked to poor health habits and
early death in adults begin during adolescence
– Why might adolescents develop poor health habits?
• In adolescence, many individuals reach a level of health, strength, and
energy that they will never match during the remainder of their lives
• They also have a sense of uniqueness and invulnerability that convinces
them that they will never suffer from poor health, or if they do, they will
quickly recover

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 Health
• Increasingly, experts recognize that whether or not
adolescents develop health problems depends primarily on
their behavior (Turbin & others, 2006)
• Experts’ goals are to:
– Reduce adolescents’ health-compromising behaviors, such as
drug abuse, violence, unprotected sexual intercourse, and
dangerous driving
– Increase adolescents’ health-enhancing behaviors, such as
exercising, eating nutritiously, wearing seat belts, and getting
adequate sleep

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 Risk-Taking Behavior

• One type of health-compromising behavior that increases in

adolescence is risk taking (Lynn-Lansman & others, 2010;
Rao & others, 2010)
– Beginning in early adolescence, individuals seek experiences
that create high intensity feelings . . . adolescents like
intensity, excitement, and arousal
• “While these patterns of emotional changes are evident to some degree
in most adolescents, it is important to acknowledge the wide range of
individual differences during this period of development” (Dahl, 2004,
p. 6)

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 Risk-Taking Behavior

• Researchers also have found that the more resources there

are in the community, such as youth activities and adults
as role models, the less likely adolescents are to engage in
risky behavior (Jessor, 1998; Yancey & others, 2010)
• Recently, neurobiological explanations of adolescent risk-
taking have been proposed (Steinberg, 2009)

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 Risk-Taking Behavior
• What can be done to help adolescents satisfy their
motivation for risk taking without compromising their
health?
– One strategy is to increase the social capital of a community
(Youngblade & others, 2006)
– It is important for parents, teachers, mentors, and other
responsible adults to effectively monitor adolescents’
behavior (Fang, Schinke, & Cole, 2010)

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 Health Services

• Adolescents underutilize other health-care systems (Hoover &

others, 2010)
– Many adolescents don’t believe that health-care providers can
help them
– Some health-care providers may want to provide better health
care for adolescents but lack adequate training and/or time
during their visit
– Of special concern is the low use of health services by older
adolescent males

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 Health Services
• Among the chief barriers to better health care for adolescents
are cost, poor organization and availability of health services,
lack of confidentiality, and reluctance on the part of health
care providers to communicate with adolescents about
sensitive health issues. (Hoover & others, 2010; Lara-Torre,
2008)

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 Leading Causes of Death

• The three leading causes of death in adolescence and

emerging adults are unintentional injuries, homicide,
and suicide (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2010)
• Unintentional injuries
– Almost half of all deaths from 15 to 24 years of age are due to
unintentional injuries, approximately ¾ of them involving
motor vehicle accidents
– In about 50% of motor vehicle fatalities involving
adolescents, the driver has a blood alcohol level of 0.10%—
twice the level needed to be designated as “under the
influence” in some states

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 Leading Causes of Death

• Homicide
• Homicide is a leading cause of death in adolescents and
emerging adults, especially among African American males
who are three times more likely to be killed by guns than by
natural causes
• Suicide
• Suicide is the third-leading cause of death in adolescence and
emerging adulthood
• Since the 1950s, the adolescent and emerging adult suicide
rate has tripled, although it has declined in recent years (Ash,
2008)
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 Emerging Adults’ Health

• Emerging adults have more than twice the mortality rate of

adolescents (Park & others, 2008)
– Compared to adolescents, emerging adults engage in more
health-compromising behaviors, have more chronic health
problems, are more likely to be obese, and are more likely to
have a mental health disorder (Irwin, 2010)
• Few emerging adults stop to think about how their personal
lifestyles will affect their health later in their adult lives
(Sakamaki & others, 2005)

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 Emerging Adults’ Health

• The negative effects of abusing one’s body might now show

up in emerging adulthood, but they probably will surface
later in early adulthood or in middle adulthood (Rathunde &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2006)

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 Figure 2.8 – Mortality Rates of U.S. Adolescents and
Emerging Adults

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 Nutrition

• Nutrition is an important aspect of health-compromising and

health-enhancing behaviors (Seo & Sa, 2010; Schiff, 2011;
Spruijt-Metz, 2011)
– The eating habits of many adolescents are health-
compromising and an increasing number of adolescents have
an eating disorder (Haley, Hedberg, & Leman, 2010;
Thompson, Manore, & Vaughn, 2011)
• Parents play an important role in adolescents’ nutrition
through the food choices they make available to
adolescents, serving as role models for healthy or unhealthy
nutrition, and including adolescents in regular family meals
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 Nutrition

• Schools also can play an important role in adolescents’

eating patterns
• A special concern in American culture is the amount of fat
in the diet

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 Figure 2.9 - Percentage of U.S. High School Students Who Ate Fruits
and Vegetables Five or More Times a Day, 1999 to 2007

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 Exercise

• Researchers have found that individuals become less active

as they reach and progress through adolescence (Pate &
others, 2009)
– A recent national study of U.S. 9- to 15-year-olds revealed
that almost all 9- and 11-year-olds met the federal
government’s moderate to vigorous exercise
recommendations per day (a minimum of 60 minutes a day),
but only 31 percent of 15-year-olds met the recommendations
on weekdays and only 17 percent met the recommendations
on weekends (Nadar & others, 2008)

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 Exercise

• Ethnic differences in exercise participation rates of U.S.

adolescents also occur and these rates vary by gender
• A comparison of adolescents in 28 countries found that U.S.
adolescents exercised less and ate more junk food than
adolescents in most of the other countries (World Health
Organization, 2000)
– U.S. adolescents were more likely to eat fried food and less
likely to eat fruits and vegetables than adolescents in most
other countries studied

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 Figure 2.10 - Exercise Rates of U.S. High
School Students by Gender and Ethnicity

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 Exercise

• Exercise is linked to a number of positive outcomes in

adolescence (Sund, Larsson, & Wichstrom, 2010)
• The benefits of regular exercise include:
– A positive effect on weight status (McMurray & others, 2008)
– Reduced triglyceride levels, lower blood pressure, a lower
incidence of type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease
(Butcher & others, 2008; Lobelo & others, 2010)
– Physical fitness in adulthood (Mikkelsson & others, 2006)

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 Exercise

– Higher level of task preparation and response inhibition,

which benefit learning and academic achievement (Stroth &
others, 2009)
– Lower drug use (Delisle & others, 2010)
– Positive sleep patterns (Brand & others, 2010)
– A possible buffer against the stress and improvement in
mental health and life satisfaction (Butcher & others, 2008)
– Improvement in cognitive skills (Best, 2011)

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 Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise

• Families
– Parents play an important role in influencing adolescents’
exercise patterns (Dugan, 2008)
– A recent study revealed that 9- to 13-year-olds were more
likely to engage in physical activity during their free time
when the children felt safe, had a number of places to be
active, and had parents who participated in physical activities
with them (Heitzler & others, 2006)

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 Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• Schools
– Some of the blame for the poor physical condition of U.S.
children and adolescents falls on U.S. schools, many of which
fail to provide physical education class on a daily basis (Pate
& others, 2010; Schmottiach & McManama, 2010)
• A recent national survey revealed that only 30% of U.S. 9th through
12th graders participated in PE classes 5 days in an average school
week (Eaton & others, 2008)

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 Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• Males (33%) were more likely to participate at this level than females
(27%)
• Tenth graders were most likely to regularly take a PE class (47%); 11th
(30%), and 12th graders (31%)
– Other research studies have found positive benefits for
programs designed to improve the physical fitness of students
(Timperio, Salmon, & Ball, 2004; Veugelers & Fitzgerald,
2005)

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 Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise

• TV/Computers
– Screen-based activity may be involved in lower levels of
physical fitness in adolescence (Leatherdale, 2010; Rey-
Lopez & others, 2008; Sisson & others, 2010)
– A recent study revealed that children and adolescents who
engaged in the highest amount of daily screen-based activity
were less likely to exercise daily (Sisson & others, 2010)
– Children and adolescents who engaged in the low physical
activity and high screen-based activity were almost twice as
likely to be overweight as their more active, less sedentary
counterparts

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 Sports

• Sports can have both positive and negative influences on

adolescent development (Adie, Dude, & Ntoumanis,
2010; Busseri & others, 2010)
• Potential positive influences
– Many sports activities can improve adolescents’ physical
health and well-being, self-confidence, motivation to excel,
and ability to work with others (Gaudreau & others, 2009)
– Adolescents who participated in sports were less likely to
engage in such risk-taking behaviors as truancy, cigarette
smoking, sexual intercourse, and delinquency (Nelson &
Gordon-Larsen, 2006)

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 Sports

• Potential negative influences:

– Pressure to achieve and win, physical injuries, distraction
from academic work, and unrealistic expectations for
success as an athlete (Metzl, 2008)
– Pressure by parents and coaches to win at all costs,
competition anxiety, and self-centeredness (Smith & Smoll,
1997)
– Injuries (Halstead & others, 2010; Stein & Micheli, 2010)
– Use of performance-enhancing drugs, such as steroids (Elliot
& others, 2007)

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 Sports

– Coaches who create a performance-oriented motivational

climate that is focused on winning, public recognition, and
performance relative to others (Roberts, Treasure, &
Kavussanu, 1997)
– The female athlete triad: disordered eating, amenorrhea, &
osteoporosis (Misra, 2008; Patano, 2009)

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 Sleep
• There has been a surge of interest in adolescent sleep patterns
(Abe, Hagihara, & Nobutomo, 2010; Fakier & Wild, 2010;
McHale & others, 2010)
• In a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation
(2006):
– 45% of the adolescents got inadequate sleep on school nights
(less than eight hours)
– Adolescents who got inadequate sleep on school nights were
more likely to feel more tired or sleepy, more cranky and
irritable, fall asleep in school, be in a depressed mood, and
drank caffeinated beverages than their counterparts who got
optimal sleep
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 Sleep
• Mary Carskadon and her colleagues have conducted a number
of research studies on adolescent sleep patterns
– They found that when given the opportunity adolescents will
sleep an average of 9 hours and 25 minutes a night. Most get
considerably less than 9 hours of sleep, especially during the
week
– Carskadon has suggested that early school starting times may
cause grogginess, inattention in class, and poor performance on
tests
• Research indicates that sleep patterns change in emerging
adulthood (Kloss & others, 2011; Wolfson, 2010; Galambos,
Howard, & Maggs, 2011)
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 Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
• The Evolutionary Perspective
– Natural Selection and Adaptive
Behavior
– Evolutionary Psychology
– Evolutionary Developmental
Psychology
– Evaluating Evolutionary
Psychology
• The Genetic Process
– DNA and the Collaborative Gene
– Genotype and Phenotype
McGraw-Hill Copyright © 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Heredity-Environment
Interaction
– Behavior Genetics
– Heredity-Environment
Correlations
– Shared and Nonshared
Environmental Experiences
– The Epigenetic View
– Gene x Environment (G x E)
Interaction
– Conclusions About Heredity-
Environment Interaction
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 Evolution, Heredity, and Environment

• The evolutionary perspective

– In terms of evolutionary time, humans are relative
newcomers to the earth
– As our earliest ancestors left the forest to feed on the
savannahs, and finally to form hunting societies on the open
plains, their minds and behaviors changed

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 Evolution, Heredity, and Environment

• Natural selection: The evolutionary process that favors

those individuals of a species who are best adapted to
survive and reproduce
– Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859)
• Adaptive behavior: A modification of behavior that
promotes an organism’s survival in the natural habitat
– All organisms must adapt to particular places, climates, food
sources, and ways of life in order to survive

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 Evolution, Heredity, and Environment

• Evolutionary psychology
– Emphasizes the importance of adaptation, reproduction, and
“survival of the fittest” in explaining behavior
– The process of natural selection favors those behaviors that
increase organisms’ reproductive success and their ability to
pass their genes on to the next generation (Enger, Ross, &
Bailey, 2009)
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
– There is growing interest in using the concepts of
evolutionary psychology to understand human development
(Buss, 2011; Greve & Bjorklund, 2009; Hawley, 2011)
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 Figure 2.12 - The Brain Sizes of Various Primates and
Humans in Relation to the Length of the Juvenile Period

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 Evolution, Heredity, and Environment

• Evaluating evolutionary psychology

– Albert Bandura (1998) has criticized the “biologizing” of
psychology
• He rejects what he calls “one-sided evolutionism”
• Evolution gave humans body structures and biological potentialities, not
behavioral dictates
– Stephen Jay Gould (1981) concluded, in most domains, human
biology allows a broad range of cultural possibilities

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 The Genetic Process
• Our many traits and characteristics that are genetically
influenced have a long evolutionary history that is retained
in our DNA
• The nucleus of each human cell contains chromosomes –
threadlike structures that contain DNA
– DNA: A complex molecule that contains genetic information
– Genes: Short segments of DNA which direct cells to
reproduce themselves and to assemble proteins

79
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 Figure 2.13 - Cells, Chromosomes,
Genes, and DNA

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 The Genetic Process

• The number of human genes has been revised further

downward to approximately 21,500 (Ensembl Human,
2008)
• Each segment of DNA is not translated, in automation-like
fashion, into one and only protein

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 The Genetic Process

• Rather than being an independent source of information,

DNA collaborates with other sources of information to
specify our characteristics (Diamond, 2009; Diamond,
Casey, & Munakata, 2011)
• In short, a single gene is rarely the source of a protein’s
genetic information, much less of an inherited trait
(Gottlieb, 2007)

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 Genotype and Phenotype

• A person’s genetic heritage—the actual genetic

material—is called a genotype
• The way an individual’s genotype is expressed in
observed and measurable characteristics is called a
phenotype
– Phenotypes include physical traits and psychological
characteristics
• For each genotype, a range of phenotypes can be
expressed (Brooker, 2011; Hartwell, 2011; Johnson,
2012)

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 Heredity-Environment Interaction

• Heredity and environment interact to produce development

• Behavior genetics: The field that seeks to discover the
influence of heredity and environment on individual
differences in human traits and development (Goldsmith,
2011; Gregory, Ball, & Button, 2011)
– To study the influence of heredity on behavior, behavior
geneticists use twin and adoption studies
• Identical twins are monozygotic twins
• Fraternal twins are dizygotic twins

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 Heredity-Environment Correlations

• An individuals’ genes influence the types of environments to

which they are exposed
• Three ways that heredity and environment are correlated
(Scarr, 1993):
– Passive genotype-environment correlations
– Evocative genotype-environment correlations
– Active (niche-picking) genotype-environment correlations
• Scarr concludes that the relative influence of the three
genotype-environment correlations changes as children
develop from infancy through adolescence
85
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 Figure 2.14 - Exploring Heredity-Environment
Correlations

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 Shared and Non-Shared Environmental
Experiences
• Behavior geneticists emphasize that another way of
analyzing the environment’s role in heredity-environment
interaction is to consider experiences that adolescents share
in common with other adolescents living in the same home,
as well as experiences that are not shared (Plomin & others,
2009)
• Behavior geneticist Robert Plomin (2004) has found that
common rearing, or shared environment, accounts for little
of the variation in adolescents’ personality or interests

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 The Epigenetic View

• The heredity-environment correlation view

emphasizes how heredity directs the kind of
environmental experiences individuals have
• In line with the concept of the collaborative gene, the
epigenetic view emphasizes that development is the
result of an ongoing, bidirectional interchange
between heredity and the environment (Diamond,
2009; Gottlieb, 2007)

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 Figure 2.15 - Comparison of the Heredity-Environment
Correlation and Epigenetic Views

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 Gene x Environment (GxE) Interaction

• An increasing number of studies are exploring how

the interaction between heredity and environment
influences development, including interactions that
involve specific DNA sequences (Caspi & others,
2011; Rutter & Dodge, 2011)
• This type of research describes GxE interaction: the
interaction of a specific measured variation in DNA
and a specific measured aspect of the environment
(Diamond, 2009; Dodge & Rutter, 2011)

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 Conclusions About Heredity-Environment
Interaction
• Heredity and environment operate together
– The relative contributions of heredity and environment are not
additive
– Nor is it accurate to say that full genetic expression happens
once, around conception or birth
• Genes produce proteins throughout the life span, in many different
environments
• The emerging view is that many complex behaviors likely
have some genetic loading gives people a propensity for a
specific developmental trajectory (Goldsmith, 2011; Plomin
& others, 2009)

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 E-LEARNING TOOLS

To help you master the material in this chapter,

visit the Online Learning Center for
Adolescence, 14th edition at:

http://www.mhhe.com/santrocka14e

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