Historical generations and psychology. The case of the Great Depression and World War II.

The author assembles a theory of historical generations from dispersed sources in the social and behavioral sciences and in the humanities, differentiates the theory from formulations of other generation concepts, and applies it to central features in the lives of persons in the generation of the Great Depression and World War II. The application of the theory to historical materials explains how a commitment to social interdependence emerged as the signature orientation of the generation of the Great Depression and World War II. Challenges to the perspective of contextualism stem from the theory's hypotheses about linkages that mediate between cataclysmic events and psychological processes, the influence of historical generations on many of psychology's everyday concerns, and instructive comparisons with a body of growing research on processes involving adaptations to different cultures.