The average person does not exist, yet we are still working with (group) averages in our daily lives. What limitations does this pose to individual development and what price are we paying, especially in high-performing domains like elite sports?
Choosing a particular career path can be challenging, and comprises many components, situations, people and goals. Moreover, the choice process for a career path differs from individual to individual. In this blog post, Filomena Parada explains how the complex and heterogeneous process of career choice and related education- and work-transitions can be investigated by combining three diverse approaches to study human functioning.
This year Rijksuniversiteit Groningen offers for the first time symposium on Complex Dynamic System Theory in the Behavioral Sciences aimed especially at students, featuring speakers from the field of Psychology, Philosophy, Human Movement Sciences and Linguistics. Attend a day of presentations, workshops, and a networking reception. We look forward to welcoming you in Groningen.
People tend to coordinate their actions, feelings, and thoughts with others in social situations. But how does this work? We asked two experts of our department, Dr. Ralf Cox (Developmental Psychology) and Dr. Pontus Leander (Organizational Psychology), who examine this intriguing topic from two different perspectives.
On April 30, 2015, after a wonderful career, Paul van Geert, professor in Developmental Psychology, bid farewell to the University of Groningen. This blog post gives an image of his farewell speech.
Children’s development is mostly seen as gradual and increasing. However, when the development of individual children is observed more closely, you see many sudden improvements, but also fallbacks and regression. This variability turns out to be a crucial part of human development.
Psychological traits such as self-esteem explain how people differ from each other, but what explains the psychological traits and their development? Psychologists tend to explain individual differences and developmental trajectories of traits based on variables that are separate from the traits themselves. I argue that individual differences and developmental changes can also be explained by looking at the changes in the observable traits, looking within the trait and not outside of the trait.