In 1951 Solomon Ash conducted what has become a classic study in
social psychology.
Ash set-up a testing situation in which a subject was shown a vertical line on
the left side of a screen, and asked to match which of three lines on the right
side of the screen was the same length. For the most part, this was a
relatively easy task, as was shown in a control condition. Subjects easily
detected the correct line. But, Ash was interested in determining how social
influence affected an individual’s judgment. So unbeknownst to the real
subject, he had 3-4 confederates give their responses prior to the actual
subject giving his. On 12 of 18 trials they gave a clearly incorrect response.
On 75% of these trials the actual subject went along with the confederates and
made the incorrect judgment. Subsequent interviews with subjects found that most
conformed to the confederates in order to fit in with the group. While there
have been many critiques of this particular paradigm over the years, Ash clearly
demonstrated how powerful normative group behavior can be in shaping the
behavior of individuals in the group. In
essence, conforming to what others in a group do is easier than asserting
individuality.
Then there was Nathan Pritikin who was a self-made
entrepreneur-inventor, who after being diagnosed with heart disease in 1957,
was determined to find a holistic cure to his malady. He scoured the scientific and anthropological
literature and developed a low-fat diet that was correlated with having a
healthy heart. It was based on unrefined carbohydrates like vegetables, fruits,
beans, and whole grains. He also included moderate amounts of aerobic exercise
in his program. This formula helped him to reverse his condition, and he set
out to help others with similar medical conditions that resulted from poor
health behaviors. In
1976, he created the Pritikin Longevity Center, where people could go for
several weeks or months and learn about and live a Pritikin Lifestyle.
Without debating the virtues of the Pritikin Program, people who attend the
residential site report how transformative the experience is and how relative
easy it is to follow what some have observed to be a very restrictive and hard
to follow diet. What is there about being in residence that makes conforming to
Pritikin’s regimen possible? I think that the same reason that Ash’s subjects
conformed to confederates is at play here. Everyone on the Pritikin staff,
which includes dieticians, exercise physiologists, medical doctors,
psychologists, and trainers, along with guests, behave in accordance with the
program’s diet and exercise tenets. When everyone is aligned, and the
environment is self-contained, behavioral change is relatively simple. However,
each year, many adherents return to get re-inoculated with the Pritikin Program,
as they disappointingly revert back to their pre-Pritikin behaviors once they
go home, and reconnect with the people and environment that produced the
symptomology that led them to Pritikin in the first place. Like Ash, Pritikin
shows us that it is much easier to swim downstream than upstream when
significant behavioral change is a goal.
Other Examples
Recently, important data have been reported on two initiatives
that reinforce the importance of group values, assets, and behaviors on an
individual’s economic prospects and well-being. The first entails a government
initiative called Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which attempts to answer the
question of whether moving from a high-poverty neighborhood to a lower-poverty
community improves the social and economic prospects of low-income families. In
essence, the government set-up a controlled experiment in which rental
assistance vouchers were provided to a subset of low income families to
relocate from high-poverty public housing projects to a low poverty area in
five major cities. Initial results of
MTO showed that such a move improved the mental and physical health of adults.
However, such a move had little or no impact on their economic outcomes. But,
more recent work that is able to examine the effects of such a move on the
children in these families shows that they, unlike their parents, benefitted
economically as adults. In fact, researchers Chetty and Hendersen
found that duration of exposure is a critical factor, and that every year a
child spent in the better neighborhood increased the child’s income as an
adult. They concluded that “moving a child out of public housing to a
low-poverty area when young (at age 8 on average) using a subsidized voucher
like the MTO experimental voucher will increase the child's total lifetime earnings
by about $302,000.” Other researchers corroborate such effects, and estimate
financial returns of $635,000 to children who are born into a bottom income quartile
neighborhood and are raised in a top-quartile neighborhood.
Such data provide another variation of the group and community effects shown by
Ash and Pritikin. Whether explicitly or implicitly one’s behavior is affected
by the norms of the community in which one lives.
A final example of such effects entails that of average community
longevity that I wrote about in a past post. The Center on Society and Health
at Virginia Commonwealth University has been mapping average longevity in
neighborhoods in various cities across America,
and has reported disparities as great as 20 years in communities separated by
only a few miles. Not surprisingly, such longevity differences are highly
correlated with the wealth and lifestyles of inhabitants. But, as Dan Buettner,
a researcher who has studied what has become known as
Blue Zones, where people live significantly longer and healthier
lives
explains there
are specific lessons to be learned from such research that can be applied to
other communities. Interestingly, he debunks the notion that individuals
have the fortitude to change health behaviors related to diet and exercise on
their own over the long-term. While he acknowledges that individuals may be
successful in the short-term, data shows that they invariably revert back to
their pre-diet and exercise selves. Buettner attributes 80% of the
Blue Zone effect to environmental causes
that are a function of community wide factors. Again, it appears that for
individuals seeking significant change in their lives, whether it be economic,
health, or psycho-social well-being,
swimming
downstream with one’s cohorts is a lot more effective than trying to
swim upstream against the prevailing
social-environmental currents that exist.
What Does All Of This Have To Do With Youth Development?
So what does all of this mean to those of us who work in youth
development programs? While such studies span the fields of psychology, health,
economics, and sociology, a common theme is that social influence is powerful,
and that the communities in which we grow-up and live are among the most influential
factors determining whether we will thrive. Clearly, as research shows us,
growing-up in some communities have advantages over growing-up in other
communities.
While the MTO initiative illustrates the power of moving from a
poorer community to a wealthier one for children, it seems unlikely that we
will be having such mass migrations of families anytime soon. Consequently, those
of us doing youth development work might think more strategically about how we
can construct environments within
environments in order to provide as much exposure to our youth of those
things that they would get in a wealthier and healthier community if they had
the opportunity to do so. This is like having a Pritikin Longevity Institute or
a Blue Zone transported and
reconstructed in other locales. In many ways, whether by design or not, this is
what the best youth development programs are already doing. It is more than
their themes, curriculums, or buildings that make them great. It is how their
communities work. The question then becomes, how does a program create a Pritikin-like, MTO-like, higher longevity-like,
neighborhood that helps kids to
thrive beyond what they would normally achieve had such a program not existed?
Clearly, there are lots of
good ideas about how to answer such a question, with lists of properties that
researchers have identified over the years. It
makes sense that on a basic level that these neighborhoods need to be places that are physically and
psychologically safe. This provides the prerequisites for any environment where
positive youth development occurs. They also need to be places that are
inclusive, irrespective of a child’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or
socio-cultural-economic identity. In essence, they are friendly and safe places
where warm and supportive relationships can be developed among peers, and
between adult staff and youth. Such relationships can be equated with those in
a family in that staff are willing to show unconditional love for participants.
Like good parents, they attempt to expose children to enriching experiences,
celebrate their successes, and are willing to forgive them for periodically going
off the rails. As well, peers, like
siblings, support one another and will re-embrace each other after inevitable
conflicts. Everyone will also celebrate noteworthy events and accomplishments
of each participant, whether they are birthdays, an improving grade, or success
in an extracurricular endeavor. Community members will also be supportive and
sympathetic to those experiencing personal setbacks. In essence, such neighborhoods are places that promote building
strong social bonds among kids and adult mentors; where all feel valued,
supported, and connected to one another.
While all sorts of thematic groups can form such connections, the distinguishing quality of those
that promote positive youth development is that they develop and reinforce
positive behavior by the pervasive social norms that permeate their culture. An
example of this in Project Coach is our deep-rooted belief in the growth mindset ,
which asserts that development as coaches, students, and citizens normally comes
from learning, practicing, and expending effort, rather than from ethereal
innate gifts. We recognize that mistakes are a part of learning, and that
taking calculated risks, such as attempting to learn a more difficult skill or
enrolling in a more challenging class at school, is to be encouraged despite
the increased possibility of failure. Our program culture consistently
reinforces such beliefs and behaviors, and recognizes participants for being
industrious, enthusiastic, and showing initiative. Other pervasive qualities
that Project Coach fosters encompass empathy, friendship, loyalty, self-control,
cooperation, and community development. We also value democratic decision-making
with regard to selecting staff, program activities, and choosing community
projects. By engaging youth in this process we have found that it enhances
their sense of efficacy and beliefs about effecting change in their own lives
and that of their community. Of critical importance in building and maintaining
such a culture is explicitly recognizing what a program stands for, and
operationalizing such through its day-to-day activities.
Once such a framework is created, virtually anything else is
possible. Having a theme around which such a culture is built is fairly typical
of youth development programs. Sports, arts, music, dance, theater, media, environment,
and many other activities provide the core that draws everyone together. These
thematic activities can also provide opportunities to bridge outward across neighborhoods
and to reduce the isolation and social distances between poor and wealthier
areas. We have seen underserved kids playing squash at Harvard, others broadcasting
their commentary on NPR, and others visiting corporate offices in Boston to
deliver art works. We have also seen kids traveling nationally and
internationally to work with other kids on various projects. The point here
being that enriched neighborhoods are
not segregated and insular, but ones that promote connections across racial,
ethnic, and socio-economic strata. In essence, this captures some of the benefits
of MTOs and other beneficial environmental supports to development, without
having to create massive government initiatives that transplant large numbers
of families.
In aggregate I have attempted to describe another critical aspect
of excellent youth development programs. It is like the spaces between notes in
a great piece of music or the pauses and inflections of voice manifested by
great actors. They are not as readily emphasized as the notes played by the
musician or the words uttered by a thespian, but they make all the difference
in the quality of a performance. Barton Hirsch captured the essence of what
this quality is in his book entitled A
Place to Call Home.
Call it a culture, a neighborhood, or a home, but the basic message is that transformative programs for
youth need to be more than their themes, curriculum, or physical plants. They
need to be places that resemble families, and which have the capacity to instantiate
its security, values, and behavioral norms while supporting the growth of its
members. When a child becomes part of such a community, good things generally
happen, as we have learned, it is a lot easier to swim with the pack, than to
swim against it.
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