The ecology of the human development and relationships
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is one of the most accepted explanations regarding the influence of social environments on human development. This theory argues that the environment you grow up in affects every facet of your life. Social factors determine your way of thinking, the emotions you feel, and your likes and dislikes.
If you change your environment, you’ll change. If you move to another country with a different culture, your identity will certainly change. The same can happen if your social role changes.
Urie Bronfenbrenner names five systems that involve the primary nucleus understood as the same individual. The systems are the following: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
- The microsystem
It constitutes the most immediate or closest level in which the individual develops. The specific environments included in the microsystem are the home, the workplace, relationships with friends, etc. Also is includes behaviours, roles, and relationships that characterize the everyday contexts of an individual’s functioning.
The microsystem forms the context in which a person can personally interact with others. The specific environments included in the microsystem are the home, the workplace, relationships with friends, etc.
The spaces and environments where people spend most of their day tend to be stable. Home, workplace, school, friendships, etc. these are elements that are usually not under much variation. However, they can be modified at certain times and directly affect the individual. The main elements that can change a person’s microsystem are:
Changing residences and the people they live with, starting a new family, changing schools or jobs, suffering from any illness requiring hospitalization and changing friends.
All people are exposed to close-knit relationships and dynamics that can affect others. The elements that make up the individual’s microsystem include a multitude of variables and factors that interact and feed on each other.
The relationships formed in microsystems are characterized by the fact that they have the greatest impact on the development of the individual. Depending on what the person does on a daily basis, the direct stimuli they receive from the context and their relationship with people mark their cognitive, moral, emotional, ethical and behavioural development.
2. The mesosystem
Mesosystem includes the interrelation of two or more environments in which the person actively participates.
The mesosystem is understood as a system of microsystems that develops or expands when the person enters a new environment. It can also be understood as the link between microsystems. Clear examples can be the relationship between family and school, or between family and friends.
A mesosystem specifically refers to the previously described feedback between microsystems. For example, the relationship between family and work, or social life and school.
The mesosystem involves a wide flow of information between the microsystems. In other words, the individual develops the role of communicator between people who are related to each other. For example, the child creates a kind of communication with the teacher (school microsystem) and his parents (family microsystem).
Fluctuations in communication developed in individual associated microsystems determine their development and the development of individuals.
The mesosystem presents one of the elements that can influence the personal development of individuals to a greater extent. This element deals with empowering behaviours that are learned and reinforced in two different microsystems. For example, if the child is taught to eat with the mouth closed at home and at school, the possibility of this learning will be doubled, since it is reinforced by two different microsystems.
The mesosystem determines the extent of a person’s social support. Depending on the interaction and complementation of microsystems, an individual may or may not see their support needs. A subject may have very good family support but no friends. Or you have a lot of friends, but you have shortcomings in the family environment.
Microsystems alone are not able to create social support for the individual, as they determine the functioning in the given environment. However, the mesosystem enables the analysis of the subject’s personal relationships from an integration point of view.
3. The exosystem
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The exosystem contains environments in which the person is not directly involved, but events occur that affect the functioning of the individual’s environment.
From this perspective an exosystem refers to the forces that influence what happens in microsystems and the individual is not understood as an active subject.
It is made up of, for example, the nature of the parents’ work, the relationships that a teacher maintains with the rest of the faculty, etc.
The person does not participate directly in these contexts (although in some they may do so and become a microsystem). Similarly, changes or changes in these environments usually affect the individual in some way.
In the , the relationship quality of the individuals closest to a person determines their satisfaction.
The relationships formed in the exosystem indirectly affect humans. In this sense, the opinions of others about oneself can modify the individual’s development. For example, the opinions of a person’s child’s teachers, the comments of the couple’s friends about themselves, the image offered to acquaintances or people in the neighbourhood, etc.
Interestingly, the personal satisfaction of the subjects with whom they share their daily lives partially modulates the type of relationship formed. For this reason, the relationship between third parties indirectly affects the development of the individual.
4.The macrosystem
The macrosystem encompasses factors related to culture and human historical development. It is defined as the values, traditions, and sociocultural characteristics of the broad cultural components that influence a developing child’s identity, values, and perceptions.
5. The chronosystem
The fifth and final level of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is known as the chronosystem. This system consists of all of the experiences that a person has had during his or her lifetime, including environmental events, major life transitions, and historical events
Implications
According to Bronfenbrenner, the micro-, meso-, and exosystems in a society are generally similar in structure and substance. As if they were built from the same master model.
This fact is explained by the enormous influence of the macrosystem on the previous systems. Social class, ethnic and religious group, social customs and socio-cultural norms greatly determine the individual development of each person and the quality of their relationships.
The main aspects defining this last system of the ecological model are the following:
· Each region has a number of laws and policies that determine what behaviours by individuals is allowed and what are they accountable for. In this way, much of personal development and behaviour is dictated by the levels of government of the regions in which the individual operates.
· In every context, people’s actions are implicitly determined by a set of sociocultural norms. These norms make it possible for individuals to socialize and live side by side. Similarly, they aim to establish operational norms that enable mutual understanding. Sociocultural norms differ in each geographical region and especially in each cultural region. The greater the cultural differences between regions, the greater the differences in the individual development of its members.
· Beyond the rules, there are a variety of operating rules dictated by the social evaluation of the members of the environment. For example, it is not forbidden to sit on the ground in the street. However, it is a socially extravagant element in different contexts. This infinity of social rules dictates much of people’s behavior and especially their development.
Criticism of the ecological model
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model provides a detailed analysis of the environmental factors of human development. Currently, this is one of the most accepted and widespread theories within the framework of evolutionary psychology, as it allows for a detailed analysis of the impact of context and environment on personal development.
However, this model has received many criticisms, especially because the theory pays little attention to biological and cognitive factors.
The ecological model explains personal development only through the contextual aspect, which is an element that can directly intervene. In this sense, despite the fact that multiple studies have shown that environmental factors have a greater weight in the development and behaviour of people than biological factors, the existence of the latter cannot be denied.
Each individual is born with a biological part that determines their growth and development. Despite the fact that genetic elements are usually extremely vulnerable to the environment, they also seem to play a more or less relevant role in the development of the subjects’ personality and individual characteristics. Thus, even though the ecological model is a very good theory for explaining individual development, it lacks explanatory elements for the biological differences in people.
