Table 4.
Theories addressing social change in subfields of psychology.
Theory | Perspective of social change | Key authors |
---|---|---|
Cultural and evolutionary psychology | Focuses on how social change and human biology are linked and aims to identify how social change influences human genetics and the way humans adapt to these changes. | Feldman and Laland, 1996; Laland et al., 2000 |
Developmental psychology | Research in this field has demonstrated that social change has the potential to impact developmental stages for children and adolescents as well as their identities and well-being. | Pinquart and Silbereisen, 2004; Greenfield, 2009, 2016 |
Industrial/organizational psychology | Focuses on organizational change as a form of social change. Three main themes emerge from this field: how to successfully implement organizational change, how to limit the negative impact of organizational change and understand the psychological processes of people who are confronting organizational change. | Kanter, 1991; Burke and Litwin, 1992; Sanzgiri and Gottlieb, 1992; Meyer and Allen, 1997; Reichers et al., 1997 |