Genetic psychology: what it is and how it was developed by Jean Piaget

The name of genetic psychology is possibly unknown to many, and it will surely make more than one think about genetics. behavior, despite the fact that, as formulated by Piaget, this field of psychological study has little to do with the inheritance.

Genetic psychology focuses on finding out and describing the genesis of human thought throughout development of the individual. Let's take a closer look at this concept below.

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Genetic psychology: what is it?

Genetic psychology is a psychological field that is responsible for investigating thought processes, their formation and their characteristics. Try to see how mental functions develop from childhood, and look for explanations that make sense of them. This psychological field was developed thanks to the contributions of Jean Piaget, very important Swiss psychologist during the 20th century, especially with regard to constructivism.

Piaget, from his constructivist perspective, postulated that all thought processes and individual characteristics of the mind are aspects that are formed throughout life. The factors that would influence the development of a specific style of thinking and knowledge and associated intelligence would basically be any external influence that one receives during his lifetime.

It is possible that the name genetic psychology misleads into thinking that it has something to do with the study of genes and DNA in general; however, it can be said that this field of study has little to do with biological inheritance. This psychology is genetic insofar as addresses the genesis of mental processes, that is, when, how and why the thoughts of human beings are formed.

Jean Piaget as a reference

As we have already seen, the most representative figure within the concept of genetic psychology we have in the person of Jean Piaget, who is considered, especially in the developmental psychology, one of the most influential psychologists of all time, along with Freud and Skinner.

Piaget, after obtaining a doctorate in biology, began to study psychology in depth, being under the tutelage of Carl Jung Y Eugen bleuler. Later, he began working as a teacher at a school in France, where he had first-hand contact with the way in which the children were developing cognitively, which made him start his study in the psychology of the growth.

While there, he became interested in understanding how thought processes were being formed from early childhood, in addition to being interested in see what changes were taking place depending on the stage in which the infant was and how this could reverberate, very long-term, in their adolescence and adulthood.

Although the first studies of him were something that went quite unnoticed, it was from the sixties that began to acquire greater prominence within the behavioral sciences and, especially, in the psychology of the growth.

Piaget wanted to know how knowledge was formed and, more specifically, how it was passed from properly infantile knowledge, in which knowledge abounds the simplistic explanations that are not far removed from the ‘here and now’, to a more complex one, such as the adult, in which abstract thought has room.

This psychologist was not a constructivist from the beginning. When he began his research, he was exposed to multiple influences. Jung and Breuler, under whom he was tutored, were closer to psychoanalysis and eugenic theories, while the general trend in research was empiricist and rationalist, sometimes closer to the behaviorism. However, Piaget knew how to extract what was for him the best of each branch, adopting an interactionist position.

Behavioral psychology, led by Burrhus Frederic Skinner, was the current most defended by those who tried, from a scientific perspective, to describe human behavior. The most radical behaviorism defended that personality and mental capacities depended in a very relevant way on the external stimuli to which the person was exposed.

Although Piaget partially defended this idea, he also considered aspects of rationalism. The rationalists considered that the source of knowledge is based on our own reason, which is something more that is not what the empiricists defended and that it is what makes us interpret the world.

Thus, Piaget opted for a view in which he combined both the importance of the external aspects of the person and their own reason and ability to discern between what must be learned, in addition to the way that stimulus learns.

Piaget understood that the environment is the main cause of the intellectual development of each one, however, it is also the way in which the person interacts with the same environment is important, which causes them to end up developing certain new knowledge.

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Development of genetic psychology

Once his interactionist vision of thought was established, which ultimately ended up transforming into Piagetian constructivism as it is understood today, Piaget carried out research to clarify more exactly what the intellectual development of boys and girls was.

At first, the Swiss psychologist collected data in a similar way to more traditional research, However, he did not like this, for this reason he chose to invent his own method to investigate the kids. Among them was naturalistic observation, clinical case examination and psychometry.

As in his origins he had been in contact with psychoanalysis, in his time as a researcher he could not avoid using techniques typical of this current of psychology; however, he later became aware of how empirical the psychoanalytic method is.

Along the way of him trying to discern how human thought is generated throughout development and increasingly specifying what he understood by genetic psychology, Piaget wrote a book in which he tried to capture each of his discoveries and expose the best way to approach the study of cognitive development in the childhood: Language and thinking in young children.

The development of thought

Within genetic psychology, and from the hand of Piaget, stages of cognitive development have been proposed, which allow us to understand the evolution of children's mental structures.

These stages are the ones that come next, which we are going to address very quickly and simply highlighting which are the mental processes that stand out in each of them.

• Sensorimotor stage (0 to 4 years): The notion of space and time is acquired.
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years): Symbolic function of language and thought.
• Operational logic stage (7-11): ability to classify elements into groups.
• Formal logical stage (from the age of 11): hypothetical-deductive thinking.

How did Piaget understand knowledge?

For Piaget, knowledge is not a static state, but an active process. The subject who tries to know a certain matter or aspect of reality changes according to what he tries to know. That is, there is an interaction between the subject and knowledge.

Empiricism defended an idea contrary to the Piagetian. The empiricists argued that knowledge is rather a passive state, in which the subject incorporates knowledge from sensitive experience, without having the need to intervene around it to acquire these new knowledge.

However, the empiricist vision does not allow us to reliably explain how the genesis of thought and new knowledge occurs in real life. An example of this we have with science, which is constantly advancing. It does not do so by passive observation of the world, but by hypothesizing, reformulating arguments and testing methods, which vary depending on the findings made.

Bibliographic references:

• Coll, C. and Martí, E. (2001). Learning and development: the genetic-cognitive conception of learning. In C. Coll, J. Palacios and A. Marchesi (Comps.), Psychological development and education. 2. Scholar education psychology. 2nd ed. (pp. 67-88). Madrid: Editorial Alliance.
• Piaget, J. (1947) La psychologie de l’intelligence. Paris: A. Colin. (Trad. cast.: The psychology of intelligence. Barcelona: Criticism, 1983).
• Jáuregui, C.A., Mora, C.A., Carrillo D.M. et al. (2016). Practical manual for children with learning difficulties. Latin America: Panamerican Medical Publishing House.