Human Behavior in Response to Social Change

Social change is understood as a more or less rapid and comprehensive change of societal structures and institutions, including changes to the economic, technological, and cultural frameworks of a society (Calhoun, 1992). A case in point is the breakup or transformation of the former communist countries in Europe in the 1980s. The political transition to representative democracy included a profound change of the economic system to market capitalism, which was soon overlaid by the negative effects of globalization. Today, some 20 years after the event, we have a huge variation of political and economic transformations around the world. These transformations also include countries such as the United Kingdom or China that have undergone economic reforms without changes in the basics of the political system. Given that social change is evident at the macro level, it is also plausible to assume that such changes have an impact on individuals’ behavior and development. Until recently, however, such issues did not rank very high on the research agenda, at least not for psychology. This is the background to this Special Section, which brings together papers that investigate the effect of social change on the lives of individuals.

In order to explain our selection of papers, we want to refer to the Jena Model of Social Change and Human Development (Silbereisen, Pinquart, & Tomasik, 2010). In this model, we assume that social change results in “demands”, that is, a perceived mismatch between what one used to do and what is now required concerning core life tasks of the age period studied, such as finding a worthwhile job or a satisfying intimate relationship (see also Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2009). The demands are the individual-level manifestations of the changes on the societal level (we typically conceive them as a change for better or worse having occurred over a personally relevant period of time). Further, a multiple “filtering” is presumed to take place between the macro level and the micro level. First, countries differ in their welfare systems, and some buffer better against overtaxing effects of social change and others do not (the Scandinavian countries represent the first category, the Anglo-Saxon countries the latter one; see Hofäcker, Buchholz, & Blossfeld, 2010). Second, between the political and economic systems and their associated institutions (the macro context), there are many other lower level contexts, such as communities and neighborhoods, or the workplace, with the family to which an individual belongs as the lowest level (micro system). In this way, social change may not necessarily affect an individual directly but rather via influences on the various contexts to which an individual belongs. However, just to know about the load of demands related to social change an individual has experienced does not tell the full story; the context and its history must be taken into consideration.

In this regard, all the papers in this Special Section address macro contexts under change, typically in terms of the economic system and its performance, including the ideological underpinnings. For instance, we have papers on China, Kyrgyzstan, and Germany, all three characterized by difficult transformation processes to a new economy and democracy. We also have papers on established societies that have not experienced such a dramatic hiatus as the breakdown of the Berlin Wall, but which have nevertheless encountered dramatic changes in the life circumstances of their populations.

Demands, such as new qualification requirements or greater job uncertainties compared to previous times of stable societal circumstances, are a reflection of the societal challenges in the life world of individuals, and as such are the subject of action by those affected. According to the Jena Model, demands figure as the entry point into a process of dealing with the new claims, characterized by appraisals of their nature as a threat or opportunity, of what resources can be utilized, such as personal predisposition or social support, and finally, of how the demands are approached. This is characterized as engagement versus disengagement, based on a concept of developmental regulation by Heckhausen, Wrosch, and Schulz (2010). The result of a possibly longer process of negotiating demands is various psychosocial outcomes, such as level or change of psychological well-being that, in turn, may initiate a new cycle, which ultimately changes the demands or their origin, the societal challenges.

In research on social change the actual individual-level processes just described are not often addressed in detail, which is why the paper by Tomasik, Silbereisen, and Pinquart (2010) is so important for this issue. They show that in dealing with demands of social change, people in Germany prefer to utilize a mode of engagement in which demands are energetically pursued, and where disengagement only plays a role in certain groups that lack resources, such as those out of the labor force or single, who are especially challenged. Further, engagement is more likely if the challenges are perceived as an opportunity and a potential benefit, and finally, when the size of the demand load is factored in, the effect of the conditions mentioned is not reduced. On average, the demands of current social change experienced in Germany are seen as controllable, which is why people engage in resolving them (with the interesting side effect that people in the former East Germany are not only more burdened with demands but also deal with the demands more actively compared to those in the West of the country).

Concerning the part of the model that addresses individual-level processes, the papers selected also deal with demands in an interesting way, as well as illustrating a particular research strategy. Rather than analyzing the effect of social change indirectly by comparing historical periods representing different states in the trends of social change, they assess the individual level of affectedness by the ongoing social change. Chen and colleagues (2010) accomplished an amazing attempt to pinpoint the association between parents’ perceived load of demands and children’s reported preferences in parents’ child rearing attitudes. Basically, the more parents perceived new opportunities (threats are rather irrelevant) in the changing economy of their country, the more they encouraged their children to live up to individual responsibility. This already interesting result is even more important as the study analyzes samples from urban and rural China at a historical time when the command economy became replaced by a system based on the competition between state-run companies and new private enterprises. Compared to a study on demands in Germany (Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2009), the interesting fact is that the social change in China obviously was perceived much more favorably than is common among German samples.

Another paper can also be characterized in the language of the Jena Model as research on demands of social change, although it was conceived in a different framework. De la Sablonnière and her colleagues (2010) investigated a sample from the ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and showed that individuals’ well-being was associated with perceived relative deprivation concerning political influence of the citizens, compared over time. The time frame covered important periods in the development of the country from Soviet times to a new fledgling democracy and its future. The perceived deprivation is equivalent to a measure of demands related to social change (note that Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2009, also used retrospective assessments) and the effect of social change is stronger when trajectories of deprivation assessments over time were used as compared to single measurements.

All the studies mentioned thus far utilized samples that represent periods in a presumed process of social change, assessed in its manifestations on the individual level. In the study by Chen and colleagues (2010) the comparison of urban and rural regions represented the macro level variation, in the study on Kyrgyzstan it was the current and retrospective states of deprivation and, in the German study, variation was represented by differentially affected regions of the country, but an index of affectedness was utilized. Other studies in this Special Section represent the other well-known strategy in research on social change and compare different countries at different stages of a presumed change process, or samples from historical periods within one country. As there is no direct individual-level assessment in these studies, the relationship between the macro and micro levels is established more on the conceptual level. A prototype is the paper by Schoon and Duckworth (2010). They deal with the economic fate of early school leavers in the United Kingdom, and their particular interest is in the “off-diagonal” case of those who, in spite of the burden of lacking education, make it to economic independence without receiving state benefits later in life. In principle, the result is that those who have the will to learn (which helps to compensate for chances lost earlier) will be better off in the long term despite their initially hampered school career. What does this have to do with social change? Well, the study compares cohorts born in 1958 and those born in 1972. For the earlier cohort, this means that when they were 34 it was a time of economic prosperity, but for the later cohort, age 34 was a time of strong economic downturn with subsequent higher levels of competition for work. In other words, different trajectories of social change represented by the two cohorts mean lower returns from the same activities in the younger cohort. This is an example of the intricate ways in which time and context can interfere with life, here representing a forgiving or an accentuating environment for early life failures.

Rather than comparing cohorts, such studies may also follow a sample longitudinally and look for parallels between individual and contextual change. In this regard, Fadjukoff and colleagues (2010) had the good fortune that the Finnish economy showed repeated downturns and booms. They were interested in the trajectory of identity status over early and middle adulthood concerning occupational and political identity. Under stable circumstances, one would expect a growing share of achieved identities, but what they found was a much more complex picture. In times of recession (at age 50), occupational identity regressed and political identity progressed (people were again in a foreclosure status atypical for their age); during a boom period the opposite was found – progressive occupational but regressive political identity (at age 42). Naturally, such parallels are no proof for any causal relationships, but the differential constellation is suggestive of a period effect beyond an age-normative change of identity. Identity formation in adulthood seems to be embedded in a framework of contextual opportunities reflecting social change.

The studies reported thus far are fine examples of the currently utilized research strategies in the field, and taken together they illustrate the Jena Model’s claim that dealing with new demands of social change is moderated and mediated by various contextual influences in multiple ways. What we often perceive as firm knowledge (such as quitting school early reduces life chances, or, identity development follows an ordered sequence to identity achievement) is actually due to a particular constellation of contexts that may be much more malleable by time and space than one would have expected.

Put positively, the research and models reported here also support the forecasting and planning of social policy. Change on the macro level of society is connected to change on the micro level of individuals, and there is an emerging literature providing insights into the nature of this linkage, be it processes of developmental regulation of a mismatch between new claims and established ways of action, or processes of reacting to group deprivation as an example of a group-level construct. At any rate, although, on average, the individuals studied in the research reported here have the motivation and means to find new resolutions faced with the demands of social change, there are also groups with too few resources, such as those out of work or those who can only depend on themselves. Thanks to the results of studies such as those presented here, we can get a clearer indication of where to start in order to help people cope with social change. As the example of China shows, this may be the strengthening of individual resources and capabilities for dealing with new challenges. Parents seem to be rather quick in picking up the vibrations of social change and tend to react accordingly for the advantage of their offspring. Obviously there is more that can be done, but family and school socialization are certainly prominent arenas to prepare people for new times.

Much still needs to be done before research can propose the formulation of particular social policies. As one of us mentioned in a recent UNESCO publication (Silbereisen, Ritchie, & Overmier, 2010), research on the consequences of social change on individual adaptation and development is a way of bringing together behavioral and social sciences – we provide the insights into the mechanisms that link the two levels and as such we are crucial for the understanding of human behavior in times of accelerated social change (which, of course, is not only a reaction but also a provocation for changes to come). Our hope is that this Special Section will increase the interest in such research.

Finally, we want to thank all those who responded to our call for papers, although in the end not all proposals could be included. This was in part due to the two-step review process and size constraints, but it was also the consequence of our task to put together a coherent set of papers. The reviewers deserve our special gratitude as they (and the authors) were willing to work to a very strict timeline: Lene Arnett Jensen (Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA), John Bynner (London Institute of Education, UK), Angela de Dios (Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA), Michaël Dambrun (McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada), Mary Gauvain (University of California, Riverside, CA, USA), Agnieszka Golec de Zavala (Middlesex University, UK), Jungsik Kim (Kwngwoon University, Seoul, South Korea), Bärbel Kracke (University of Erfurt, Germany), Jessica McKenzie (Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA), Martin Pinquart (Philipps University Marburg, Germany), Matthias Reitzle (University of Jena, Germany), Peter Titzmann (University of Jena, Germany), Fu Keung Daniel Wong (University of Hong Kong, China).