ABSTRACT
Many classical developmental theories were ethnocentric and failed to take into account the richness of human diversity. In contrast, contemporary theories of human development emphasize the importance of both individual and cultural factors regarding socialization; both the individual and his or her environment are seen as open and interchanging systems. Cross-culturally, human development is typically understood as taking places in stages. Each culture provides a particular set of norms regarding each stage. Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development are applicable in a wide variety of cultural settings, but Erikson has been criticized for conflating objective description with subjective prescription. Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development describe stage sequences and reasoning styles that appear to be universal across cultures, but Piaget’s methodology and procedures are currently viewed as somewhat ethnocentric. Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development which may be applied to different cultural settings, but his methodology is questionable since it was based mainly on U.S. subjects.
