The Development of Market-Driven Identities in Young People: A Socio-Ecological Evolutionary Approach.

Stephen Butler

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.623675

Abstract

With the transition toward densely populated and urbanized market-based cultures over the past 200 years, young people’s development has been conditioned by the ascendancy of highly competitive skills-based labor markets that demand new forms of embodied capital (e.g., education) for young people to succeed. Life-history analysis reveals parental shifts toward greater investment in fewer children so parents can invest more in their children’s embodied capital for them to compete successfully. Concomitantly, the evolution of market-based capitalism has been associated with the rise of extrinsic values such as individualism, materialism and status-seeking, which have intensified over the last 40–50 years in consumer economies. The dominance of extrinsic values is consequential: when young people show disproportionate extrinsic relative to intrinsic values there is increased risk for mental health problems and poorer well-being. This paper hypothesizes that, concomitant with the macro-cultural promotion of extrinsic values, young people in advanced capitalism (AC) are obliged to develop an identity that is market-driven and embedded in self-narratives of success, status, and enhanced self-image. The prominence of extrinsic values in AC are synergistic with neuro-maturational and stage-salient developments of adolescence and embodied in prominent market-driven criterion such as physical attractiveness, displays of wealth and material success, and high (educational and extra-curricular) achievements. Cultural transmission of market-driven criterion is facilitated by evolutionary tendencies in young people to learn from older, successful and prestigious individuals (prestige bias) and to copy their peers. The paper concludes with an integrated socio-ecological evolutionary account of market-driven identities in young people, while highlighting methodological challenges that arise when attempting to bridge macro-cultural and individual development.

Highlights

The challenge of identity in young people is perhaps more salient and formidable today than at any other time in history (Deci and Ryan, 2012)
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The challenge of identity in young people is perhaps more salient and formidable today than at any other time in history (Deci and Ryan, 2012). A range of studies are drawn upon to support the hypothesis that extrinsic values are defining features of market-based AC These include evolutionary studies (Shahrier et al, 2016), cross-national research on culture and individual values (Schwartz, 2007; Goerke and Pannenberg, 2015; Alderson and Katz-Gerro, 2016; Van Den Broeck et al, 2019), numerous studies from Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development in the context of increasing marketization across historical periods, across nations and within countries (Greenfield, 2013; Xu and Takeshi, 2014; García et al, 2015), and recent cohort studies by Twenge et al (2010, 2012a) documenting changes toward increased extrinsic values and decreasing intrinsic values in young people over the past 40–50 years. The optimized self is more of a dynamic, ongoing project, where young people curate and adjust their self-representations in relation to peer feedback, new life experiences and resources, or accommodation to one’s changing preferences and changing fashions

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT