sociocultural theory research paper

Emotion and its relation to cognition from Vygotsky’s perspective

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• Published: 08 June 2022
• Volume 38 , pages 865–880, ( 2023 )

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• Ngo Cong-Lem   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5257-8264 1 , 2  

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Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (VST) has been increasingly utilised as an effective framework to account for the role of emotions in learning and development. Yet, within VST, emotion has neither been systemically theorised nor investigated. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a theoretical discussion of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion and its relation to cognition. Employing a content analysis approach, three of Vygotsky’s key texts on emotions were closely read and analysed with emerging themes grouped into a system of interrelated theoretical tenets. The insights gained from this paper benefit scholars who are interested in understanding and researching emotions from a VST perspective as well as provide important implications for educational practices.

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Introduction

Emotion is recognised as a pervasive phenomenon linked to our thinking, decisions, behaviours and development. Notwithstanding, the task of defining emotion and drawing its boundaries has proven to be challenging, and has resulted in different perspectives and conclusions. In the field of education, research on emotion has been limited compared to the area of cognition (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003 ), which is generally concerned with knowledge, beliefs and practices (Borg, 2003 , 2015 ). One of the reasons is that cognition is commonly stereotyped as being associated with rationality and emotion with irrationality or feminist philosophy (Chen, 2021 ; Fried et al., 2015 ). While there has been a historical division between cognition and emotion, continued research has increasingly supported an intimate relationship between them (Pessoa, 2008 ). Understanding emotion and its relation to cognition thus has significant implications for supporting both educators’ and learners’ well-being and holistic development.

At the sociocultural turn in education (Cong-Lem, 2022a ; Johnson, 2006 ), Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (VST) has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework to account for the role of sociocultural processes in human psychological development. Recently, as research on emotion has developed into an important area of knowledge (Al-Hoorie, 2017 ), VST is contended as having the potential to transcend the historical division between cognition and emotion (Lantolf & Swain, 2019 ; Swain, 2013 ). This is demonstrated with increasing research drawing on VST, especially its concept of perezhivanie (commonly translated as emotional experiences), to account for the role of affect in learning, teaching and professional development (e.g. Dang, 2013 ; Feryok, 2020 ; Lantolf & Swain, 2019 ; Swain, 2013 ; Yang & Markauskaite, 2021 ).

Although VST offers a holistic framework that takes into consideration the role of affect in education, emotion per se has neither been examined nor theorised systemically within the theory (González Rey, 2016 ; Smagorinsky, 2011 ). Mesquita ( 2012 ) maintains that “[i]n his [Vygotsky’s] work, there is not an explicitly and systematically organized theory of emotions, yet it is believed there is a consistent theoretical legacy for understanding psychological phenomena” (p. 809). Deepening our understanding of emotions from the VST approach can in turn support the current appropriation of the theory in educational research. As previous scholars have pointed out, some of Vygotsky readings have been differentially and inadequately interpreted (Gillen, 2000 ; Smagorinsky, 2018 ). Given the prominent role of VST in informing educational theories and practices, “[t]he dominance of deficient editions of his [Vygotsky’s] writings has had regrettable consequences” (Gillen, 2000 , p. 183). It is thus essential for further systemic analysis of Vygotsky’s works or texts to generate a more granular understanding of the phenomenon.

An approach promulgated to refine our understanding of VST is to conduct a close analysis of Vygotsky’s texts, in this case, his works on emotions. As Veresov ( 2019 ) contends, “dealing with Vygotsky’s legacy, especially with English translations, we should always undertake a sort of small textual investigation” (p. 63). Van der Veer and Yasnitsky ( 2011 ) further contend “[i]t is only on the basis of an accurate corpus of all of his publications that we can arrive at an adequate assessment and subsequent elaboration or criticism of Vygotsky’s work” (p. 475). A close reading or content analysis of his texts drawing on multiple instances allows for consistently emerged conceptual themes, more reliably representative of Vygotsky’s view on the topic under investigation. Such systemic analysis of Vygotsky’s texts is particularly important given the proliferation of theoretical publications on Vygotsky’s ideas in recent years. It is argued that a more explicit methodological approach to analysing and interpreting Vygotsky’s texts can enhance the integrity and reliability of theoretical arguments scholars put forward on his behalf.

In response to the gaps discussed above, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive synthesis of Vygotsky’s view on emotion and its relation to cognition, which are two contemporary concerns in the educational literature. This is achieved by conducting a content analysis of Vygotsky’s key texts on emotions. In the next section, a brief overview of previous literature utilising VST to examine emotion is discussed.

A brief overview of previous literature on Vygotsky’s contribution to understanding emotions

The potential contribution of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotions has been increasingly recognised and embraced in the literature. However, previous researchers tend to either focus on specific concepts and works of Vygotsky to understand his view of emotions or apply these concepts for domain-specific empirical research. As for the former trend, perezhivanie has been increasingly capitalised on to extrapolate emotion from a cultural-historical perspective (e.g. Fleer & Hammer, 2013b ; Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002 ). For instance, the concept has been adopted to study teachers’ professional learning (e.g. Dang, 2013 ; Golombek & Doran, 2014 ) and children’s emotional regulation (e.g. Fleer & Hammer, 2013a , b ). In addition, exploring Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion was also accomplished by examining his work The Psychology of Art (e.g. Smagorinsky, 2011 ), a publication drawing on Vygotsky’s doctoral thesis, or Thinking and Speech (e.g. Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002 ; Mesquita, 2012 ).

Although previous literature has shed light on the potential of Vygotsky’s theory to contribute to understanding emotion, previous studies tend to draw on his concepts for practical educational research purposes as discussed above rather than theorise emotion from VST perspective. In addition, understanding emotion by merely drawing on the single concept of perezhivanie is insufficient because, in addition to emotion, perezhivanie also involves, at least equally important, cognition (Michell, 2016 ; Veresov, 2017 ). Previous scholars have also frequently examined emotion together with other phenomena (e.g. subjectivity, the essence of arts) (e.g. González Rey, 2016 ; Larrain & Haye, 2020 ; Smagorinsky, 2011 ) rather than have focused on emotion as the targeted phenomenon, which makes available VST insights into emotions still relatively limited and fragmented.

To the author’s knowledge, very few papers have thus far been dedicated to solely exploring Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion except for Sawaia ( 2000 ), Magiolino ( 2010 ) and Mesquita ( 2012 ). According to Sawaia ( 2000 ), emotion is “not as a theory systematically formulated” in VST but is “diluted across Vygotskian work” where “Vygotsky gives to emotion a character similar to cognitive processes” (as cited in Mesquita, 2012 , p. 810). Magiolino ( 2010 ) also explores Vygotsky’s elaborations on emotions and argues that Vygotsky discusses the formation and development of emotions as being enabled via semiotic processes in the individual and social history. In the same vein, Mesquita ( 2012 ) examines the relevance of Vygotsky’s theory to the understanding of emotions and highlights that VST is still relevant and has the potential for generating new knowledge of emotions for contemporary scholars. However, Mesquita mainly draws a parallel between Vygotsky’s theorisation of semiotic mediation in psychological development and contemporary understandings of emotion rather than conducting a true analysis of Vygotsky’s texts on emotions. As the author indicates, the article aims to “propose a way of understanding emotions based on the historical-cultural approach, starting from a plausible analogy with Vygotsky’s ideas on thinking and language” (Mesquita, 2012 , p. 809). Thus, there is still a need for a systemic effort to unpack in detail the nature, characteristics and development of emotions as theorised within VST.

In summary, the brief review of the literature above stipulates the need to further synthesise Vygotsky’s perspective on emotions, particularly through close reading and analysis of his primary works (Van der Veer & Yasnitsky, 2011 ; Veresov, 2017 ). The current study was conducted to bridge this gap.

Methodology

The first methodological step is to determine Vygotsky’s key texts on emotions. Such texts should help clarify how he conceptualises emotion and its characteristics. However, it is acknowledged that Vygotsky’s discussion of emotions is rather limited and scattered in his works. At the recommendations of previous scholars (e.g. Clarà, 2015 ; González Rey, 2016 ; Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002 ; Swain, 2013 ; Veresov, 2019 ), three widely cited book chapter publications considered to be important texts of Vygotsky on emotions were selected to be included in the subsequent analysis:

“Lecturer 4: Emotion and Their Development in Childhood” (Vygotsky, 1987 )

“The Crisis At Age Seven” (Vygotsky, 1998 )

“The Problem of Environment” (Vygotsky, 1994 ).

In addition to the above chapters, another round of searching was performed within the six volumes of Vygotsky’s works, conceivably the most comprehensive collection of his works published in English (Gillen, 2000 ). These texts were first loaded into NVivo software Mac version 1.6.2. Subsequently, the text query function in NVivo was utilised where the term “emotion” was entered into the text search box with the option of including stemmed words of emotion (e.g. “emotional”). The results confirmed that the selected texts above indeed contained a higher coverage of the term “emotion” than other chapters in the six volumes. As such, these texts were ultimately selected for further analysis.

Data analysis

A content analysis approach (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005 ; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016 ) was adopted to analyse the selected texts of Vygotsky with the support of NVivo. A heuristic scheme of analysis was developed to support the analysis of Vygotsky’s view on emotions:

If a theory or an aspect of it is criticised by Vygotsky, it is not considered representative of his view.

If a theory or a tenet of it is supported by Vygotsky, it is then considered part of his view.

The analytical process was performed inductively and recursively, featuring three major steps. First, the author read through the texts to have an overall impression and interpretation where relevant segments of information were coded into preliminary codes. Second, the texts were revisited back and forth to refine the existing categories, generating new categories as well as re-arranging them ( hierarchically) as new insights emerged. Also, the coded categories were regularly re-examined and grouped into broader, more abstract themes depending on their interrelations. Finally, clusters of these themes were ultimately selected for our final report. Albeit presented linearly, the process of interpretation and analysis occurred in a dynamic and iterative manner.

This section reports on the emerging themes as the result of the content analysis of Vygotsky’s texts on emotion. In order to provide a more systemic understanding of emotion from the VST perspective, the themes are further organised into three overarching categories, namely the bases of emotions, their conceptualisation and characteristics and the impact of emotions on psychological and personality development.

Evolutionary, Neurophysiological and Sociocultural Bases of Emotions

VST provides a holistic view of emotion, examining it from evolutionary, neurophysiological and cultural-historical bases. Vygotsky is critical of the view of emotions as evolutionary remnants while highlighting the fact that the emotional and psychological processes are constructed on the same cerebral mechanism. He further contends that human emotions are qualitatively different from that of animals for they have undergone a unique historical sociocultural development.

Evolutionary basis: emotions not as evolutionary remnants

Starting his lecture, Vygotsky notes that research on emotions “stood out like a white raven from other domains” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 325), which suggests the complexity of emotion and the status of the contemporary research on the phenomenon. He observes that most theories on emotion have been developed from the naturalistic inquiry, initiated by Charles Darwin where emotions are considered remnants of animal origins and the evolutionary process. Vygotsky is discontent with this idea, claiming it is an “introspective” account of human emotions: “The weakness of Darwin’s theory is that he was unable to explain the progressive development of the emotions” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 332). Moreover, accounting for emotions from an evolutionary perspective — i.e. emotions as biological adaptations — is inadequate for it fails to explain why emotional disturbances can negatively impact human psychological development (Vygotsky, 1987 ).

Neurophysiological basis: emotions as an integral part of the cerebral mechanism

Another tenet is concerned with whether the constructing mechanism of emotion is subordinate to that of our psychological functions. Vygotsky observes that previous theories all put forward the same premise that emotion is inherent and integral to the brain’s functioning. According to Vygotsky ( 1987 ), “the actual substratum of the emotional processes is not the biologically ancient internal organs, not the extracerebral mechanisms that led to the concept that the emotions are a separate state, but a cerebral mechanism [emphasis added]” (p. 332). Accordingly, emotions are constructed on the same basis as of normal psychological functions. They depend “on the same organ that controls all other reactions associated with the human mind” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 322), a conclusion also established in modern neuropsychological research (see Pessoa, 2008 ).

Sociocultural basis: emotions as developmental sociocultural processes

Vygotsky concurs with Cannon that only the instinctive component of emotion dies away as an outcome of human development but not everything about emotions. In other words, instinct is only part of what constitutes human emotions. In particular, human emotions cannot be explained in terms of organic functioning or as similar to the emotions of animals, for they “are isolated from the instinctive domain and transferred to an entirely new plane” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 322), i.e. the sociocultural plane with its historical development.

Refuting the notion that human emotions are purely biological in nature, Vygotsky stipulates the need to understand and examine emotions as developmental sociocultural processes. This is because emotions are shaped and developed as individuals engage in sociocultural processes. This premise on emotion is reflected in the works of Freud who postulates that emotions as neurotic states progress over time as the individual grows up. The emotions that are “characteristic of the young child are different from those of the adult”, for it is within the living context of the person that “the emotional processes acquire their meaning and sense” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 333). In a sense, children and adults engage in different (age relevant) activities and environments and accordingly, emotions have differential meanings and roles for them.

Conceptualisation and characteristics

While Vygotsky did not provide his definition of emotion, he critiques the view of emotions merely as physiological states. Drawing on previous experimental findings of other psychologists, he establishes that emotions are complex, dynamic and transitional in nature and once unfinished, they can continue to exist in a covert form or be transformed into another emotion. Finally, Vygotsky differentiates between emotions and feelings where the former is postulated as beneficial and the latter detrimental to the individual’s physiological and psychological functioning.

Physiological states as companions to emotions

Vygotsky also opposes understanding emotions as products of organic movements, which can be found in the works of Lange and James, also known as the James-Lange theory. For these scholars, emotions are reflections of our physiological states (i.e. not as the result of our perception of an event as conventionally understood). The James-Lange theory advocates “the idea that human emotions have biological origins in the affective and instinctive reactions of animals”, and as such, emotions are regulated, weakened and suppressed by organic expressions and dynamics (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 326). According to this view, emotion can be controlled by suppressing its external bodily manifestations, a thesis that has later been refuted with experimental findings. Vygotsky criticises this approach as a step backward from Darwinian tradition for it “stripped emotions from consciousness”, excluding “any potential for imagining the genesis of human emotions” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 328).

The James-Lange theory also promotes the dualism of higher and lower emotions as discrete types distinct from each other. However, Cannon’s experimental findings have refuted this notion, demonstrating that physical manifestations of emotions are universal. Also, it has been found that bodily physiological responses can be similar even when humans experience psychologically different emotions, for example, rage, fear and anger. Vygotsky ( 1987 ) contends that “[w]e find identical physical changes associated with what are, psychologically, very different emotions” (p. 329).

The above arguments and evidence lead to Vygotsky’s thesis that physiological states are companions to emotions rather than emotions per se. This is because the bodily responses considered features of an emotion can be elicited when the subject engages in intense physical movements. For instance, in Cannon’s experiment, when a cat was forced to run at a maximum speed, the elicited physiological changes resembled that of intense emotions. In other words, there is no simple direct relationship between our physiological reactions and internal emotions for the former are “merely the companions of the emotions” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 331).

Complex, dynamic and transitional nature of emotions

In line with Buhler Footnote 1 , Vygotsky concurs that emotions are neither static nor settled. Instead, they are nomadic and transitional. Buhler theorises a three-stage development for human behaviours where emotions serve as the motivating force. In the first stage, known as Endlust , it is the pleasure emotion expected at the end of the action that motivates the individual’s behaviour, characteristic of instinctive behaviours. In the second stage, Funktionslust , the experience of pleasure is generated during the process of engaging in the activity. This stage can be exemplified in a situation where a child eats not only to quench his hunger but also to enjoy the process of eating per se. In the third stage, Vorlust , the pleasure experience here is shifted to the beginning of the activity or the expectation of it rather than performing and accomplishing it. An example of this stage is when the situation where at the beginning of the task, a child already experiences pleasure in searching for the answer.

However, for Vygotsky, although Buhler’s theorisation above is valuable in demonstrating the transitional nature of emotions, it is simplistic and insufficient to account for real-life emotions, which are more complex and influential on the person’s psyche. He discusses:

My own data convince me that the shift of pleasure from the result of the action to its anticipation is but a pale expression of the diverse range of potential shifts [emphasis added] in emotional life, shifts that constitute the actual content of the development of the child’s emotional life (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 334).

There are two conclusions conceivable from the statement. First, the developmental shifts of emotions are more complex, diverse and dynamic than being a linear movement from the end of the activity to the beginning as postulated by Buhler. Second, these emotional shifts may index qualitative changes in the individuals’ emotional lives. In other words, when a person experiences changes in their emotional life, it suggests the presence of new psychological progress.

Vygotsky ( 1998 ) discusses how a child at the age of seven starts to acquire the meaning of his affective experiences: “Experiences acquire meaning (an angry child understands that he is angry), and because of this, the child develops new relations to himself that were impossible before the generalization of experiences” (p. 291). The age of seven is commonly considered the crisis period where the child undergoes newly formed emotional experiences and shifts. However, these emotional developments are not all retained with the child. According to Vygotsky ( 1998 ), “[n]eoformations such as self-love and self-evaluation remain, but the symptoms of the crisis (affectation, posing) are transitional [emphasis added]” (p. 292). This again indicates the temporality of emotions yet with an indication of psychological development.

Vygotsky praises Lewin who successfully demonstrated in his experiments “how one emotional state is transformed into another, how one emotional experience is substituted for another, and how an unresolved and uncompleted emotion may continue to exist in covert form” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 336). It is thus essential to recognise the dynamic, recursive and persisting nature of emotions, especially when “unresolved and uncompleted” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 336). Vygotsky, however, did not elaborate further on what types of experiments Lewin conducted to achieve these findings.

Qualitatively different emotions

Emotions can be qualitatively differential in nature. Vygotsky emphasises the value of Claparede’s finding that points out how emotions and feelings are different from each other. While the former is biologically or evolutionarily useful, the latter is postulated as having a detrimental effect and emerges in situations where the former cannot be adequately expressed. Claparede Footnote 2 utilised a frightened rabbit to illustrate this point. The rabbit was frightened (i.e. emotions) and started to run, yet the feeling of fear started to disturb its running, for which the animal failed to save itself. In this example, only the initial emotional reaction of the rabbit is considered an emotion, whereas the fear that follows is a feeling that hurts its running capacity.

Vygotsky ( 1987 ) believes this differentiation (between emotions and feelings) has “tremendous significance because the old psychology mechanically confused these aspects of emotions and feelings, ascribing both to processes that do not exist” (p. 335). The focus here is not on “the classification of the emotions but on the nature”, on “the close connections he [Claparede] has identified between the emotions and other processes of spiritual life and on his view of the diversity of the emotions themselves” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 335). Emotions exist in various forms and possess qualitatively different characteristics, which can enhance or impede mental functions, such as emotions in artistic experiences or those accompanying neurotic symptoms (Vygotsky, 1987 ).

Impact of emotions on psychological and personality development

From VST, an individual’s emotional life significantly impacts on psychological and personality development. Vygotsky additionally extrapolates this matter by revealing the psychological consequences when the normal structural relationship between cognition and emotion is altered, which leads to pathological cases. While discussing the impact of emotions, Vygotsky underscores the dominant role of cognition (i.e. intellectual thinking) in generating and moderating emotions.

Emotion as contributing to psychological development

Contrary to the view that emotions are subordinate mental processes, Vygotsky views them as contributing to a person’s psychological development. His view is particularly informed by the works of Adler who establishes the constituting role of emotions in forming a person’s general view of life: “[t]he structure of the individual’s character is reflected in his emotional life and his character is defined by these emotional experiences” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 333). Accordingly, it is important to recognise emotions as a contributing factor to the development of one’s personality, which in turn stipulates the need to examine the emotional life of a person (in addition to other cognitive aspects) to extrapolate their mental growth.

The influential role of emotions in the development of developing human psyche is also discussed in Vygotsky’s theorisation of perezhivanie, commonly translated as emotional experience. Vygotsky ( 1994 ) maintains that “the essential factors which explain the influence of environment on the psychological development of children, and on the development of their conscious personalities, are made up of their emotional experiences [perezhivanija]” (p. 339). Perezhivanie is postulated as the intrapsychological prism that refracts the external influence of the environment on the evolution of the individual’s psyche (Vygotsky, 1994 ).

The structural relationship between emotion and cognition

Toward the end of his lecture, Vygotsky discusses another important topic: the structural relationship between emotion and cognition. Cognition here refers to intellectual thinking or culturally developed forms of thinking. Vygotsky illustrates his arguments by comparing the cognitive-emotional relation between realistic/normal thinking and pathological thinking. He postulates that once an individual’s emotional life is somehow disturbed, “a unique system of relationships between thinking and the emotions” emerges, resulting in pathological mental illnesses (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 337). For instance, a patient with schizophrenia can still react emotionally but in fact, undergo a disturbance in their consciousness (Vygotsky, 1987 ).

The essence of the relationship between cognition and emotion is further discussed in light of the comparison between realistic and autistic thinking:

There is a certain synthesis of intellectual and emotional processes in both autistic and realistic thinking. In realistic thinking, however, the emotional process plays a supporting and subordinate role rather than a leading role. In autistic thinking, the emotional process takes the leading role. The intellectual process assumes the supporting role. (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 337)

Three important conclusions can be conceived from Vygotsky’s statement above. First, cognition and emotion are inherently connected regardless of the types of thinking (i.e. “a certain synthesis of intellectual and emotional processes in both autistic and realistic thinking”). Second, in normal/realistic/intellectual thinking, emotion plays the role of a subordinate process, whereas the reverse is true in autistic/pathological thinking — i.e. thinking trails behind emotions. The structural disorder in the relationship between cognition and emotion results in severe mental consequences. Vygotsky ( 1987 ) affirms that “[w]hat is disordered in this system is not the intellectual or emotional processes themselves, but their relationship” (p. 337).

For Vygotsky, recognising that thinking is also influenced by emotion is essential but insufficient. Scholars need to address the relationship further by examining the mediating role of social signs.

Admitting that thought depends on the affection is not much to do, we need to go further, go from metaphysical study to the historical study of phenomena: it is necessary to examine the relationship between intellect and affection, and the relationship of these with the social signs, and avoiding reductionism dualisms. (Vygotsky, 1934, p. 121, cited in Mesquita, 2012 )

Vygotsky stresses that the reductionist view of cognition and emotion can be overcome by exploring their interrelationships with each other and with social signs. Yet, how this premise can be realised in empirical research is still open for further discussion and research.

It is also postulated that cognition regulates emotion. Vygotsky concurs with Lewin that “[t]he emotional reaction is the unique result of a particular structure of mental processes” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 336). This statement is supported by experimental findings where the emotions characteristic of physical sporting activities can be elicited by performing mental activities (e.g. playing chess in the experiment). Also, while events may elicit different emotions yet “the structural position of the emotional processes in the whole remains the same” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 336). Otherwise said, the functioning of emotional processes is structural and psychological in nature and can be examined as such.

The dominant role of cognition has also been discussed when Vygotsky theorises the concept of perezhivanie. Vygotsky ( 1994 ) posits that a child’s perezhivanie or emotional experience in a situation is determined by “how a child becomes aware of, interprets, [and] emotionally relates to a certain event” (p. 341). How individuals emotionally experience and are influenced by an event is thus subject to their cognition, the way they understand, interpret and generalise its significance (Vygotsky, 1994 ).

The development of the current paper is a response to a lack of a more comprehensive discussion of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion. As acknowledged by previous scholars, his insights on emotions though more than 90 years old are still innovative and relevant to today’s research and training (Mesquita, 2012 ). This section further discusses implications for educational and research practices.

Implications for educational practices

Conceptualisation of emotion.

The discussion of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion in this paper provides a more refined understanding of the phenomenon from a cultural-historical perspective. Indeed, within VST, emotion is a biopsychosocial phenomenon. First, emotions undoubtedly involve intuitive biological processes. Vygotsky ( 1998 ) contends that “[e]xperience has biosocial orientation” (p. 294). However, while Vygotsky acknowledges emotions as partly instinctive, he postulates that emotions are more complex and that physiological states are merely companions of emotions. Second, emotions are psychological for they are constructed on a similar cerebral basis as mental functions and as such, they closely interact with the latter. Next, as for the sociocultural dimension, Vygotsky asserts that human emotions are distinct from that of animals for they have been transferred to a different plane of development, the sociocultural plane of consciousness with its historical development. Accordingly, the examination of emotions must involve the investigation into the cultural or intellectual development of the concerned individuals. In general, this conceptualisation of emotion from the VST perspective is in line with conclusions from modern research (see also Lumley et al., 2011 ; Perry & Calkins, 2018 ). The understanding of emotions as a biopsychosocial phenomenon has important implications for educational activities and emotion research, which are discussed in the following subsections.

Relationship between emotional and intellectual development

The inherent relation between emotion and cognition has two specific implications for educational practices. First, it is essential to attend to emotional in addition to intellectual needs. For Vygotsky, emotions play a role in forming the motivation of an individual’s activity. This notion though not extensively discussed in this paper can be found in Vygotsky’s theorisation of play (Vygotsky, 1967 /2016). Within VST, play is an important concept and practice that has the potential of fulfilling both the affective and intellectual needs of the participants. Indeed, Vygotsky is critical of the view that play merely serves as a means for intellectual development.

[I]t seems to me that to refuse to approach the problem of play from the standpoint of fulfilment of the child’s needs, his incentives to act, and his affective aspirations [emphasis added] would result in a terrible intellectualization of play. (Vygotsky, 1967 /2016, p. 6)

Accordingly, play is a meaningful concept and practice that should be explored and capitalised on in educational activities drawing on the VST framework.

Given the interrelation between cognition and emotion, it is recommended that educators and learners be equipped with essential knowledge and the relevant skills to handle their emotions effectively and constructively. Indeed, previous literature has established the role of emotion management skills in better academic achievements and well-being (e.g. MacCann et al., 2020 ; Perera & DiGiacomo, 2013 ). For instance, a large-scale meta-analysis by MacCann et al. ( 2020 ) with the involvement of 42529 participants found a significant relationship between emotional intelligence (i.e. generally understood as the capacity to regulate and utilise emotions) and academic achievement and that self-rated emotional intelligence was a better predictor of grades than standardised tests. The next subsection discusses mindfulness as another approach to emotion regulation and the contribution of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion to explaining the underlying mechanism.

Emotional regulation through mindfulness

Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion also sheds light on the potential psychological mechanism underpinning how mindfulness can support emotional regulation. While mindfulness and similar social-emotional programs are increasingly advocated in educational and training activities, the underlying explanatory mechanism for the effect of these programs still requires further explanation. Indeed, in the seminal paper on mindfulness by Shapiro et al. ( 2006 ), the authors highlight the need “to investigate questions concerning mechanisms of action underlying mindfulness-based interventions” and “to elucidate potential mechanisms to explain how mindfulness affects positive change” (p. 373). Generally, mindfulness refers to one’s conscious awareness of moment-to-moment bodily sensations, thoughts and emotions, particularly in a nurturing, non-judgemental way (Bishop et al., 2004 ; Creswell, 2017 ). Mindfulness of emotions is to be aware of the arising and manifestation/experience of one’s emotions, which resonates with the generalisation of emotions as Vygotsky discusses.

For Vygotsky, the capacity to generalise emotions is of great importance for the individual’s development because it allows the individual to establish a new relation to their own experiences and structurally change their perceived environment. Such an ability is not readily available to the child in early childhood. Rather, it is a product of their cultural/intellectual development. According to Vygotsky ( 1998 ), “[i]n early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences” (Vygotsky, 1998 , p. 291). However, as the child grows up, particularly at the age of seven, “[e]xperiences acquire meaning (an angry child understands that he is angry), and because of this, the child develops new relations to himself that were impossible before the generalization of experiences [emphasis added]” (p. 291). In this case, emotion no longer exists in the subconsciousness but it is brought to the forefront on the plane of consciousness where it is recognised and contemplated for possible transformation. Accordingly, Vygotsky’s notion of generalisation of emotional experiences can contribute to the extrapolation of how meta-consciousness of emotions can promote better regulation of emotion and other mental qualities.

Implications for research

Approaches to studying emotions.

The insights into emotions from VST stipulate the need to take a developmental approach to the study of emotions. As discussed above, emotions are not static but nomadic and can be hidden from our consciousness. Findings in Lewin’s experiments have illustrated “how one emotional state is transformed into another, how one emotional experience is substituted for another, and how an unresolved and uncompleted emotion may continue to exist in covert form” (Vygotsky, 1987 , p. 336). This indicates the complexity of emotions and the need to study them historically drawing on a VST methodological framework.

Next, from Vygotsky’s perspective, emotions are subjective and situated according to the specific personal characteristics mobilised in that situation, and thus they should be investigated within and across individuals. This notion is particularly advocated in Vygotsky’s theorisation of the concept of perezhivanie. According to Vygotsky ( 1994 ), the same event may mobilise different personal characteristics across individuals, thus causing differential perezhivanija Footnote 3 (emotional experiences). Even within an individual, different events provoke differential personal characteristics and emotional reactions. In investigating these emotional experiences, Vygotsky ( 2020 ) maintains that “it is not important to know [all of] the constitutional features of the child in themselves; rather, to us it is important to know which of these constitutional features [emphasis added] plays the decisive role in defining the child’s attitude to a given situation” (p. 72). Accordingly, determining the key characteristics of the individuals that are mobilised in the situation in question is a crucial task for researchers investigating emotions.

Vygotsky’s postulation on qualitatively different emotions stipulates the need for researchers to take into account the type of emotion in question, for example, whether is a feeling rather than an emotion because they have different effects on the individual’s functioning (see the “ Qualitatively different emotions ” section). This is a particularly important requirement in researching emotions from Vygotsky’s perspective or in critiquing his view on emotion (cf. Smagorinsky, 2021 ).

Emotional incidents in educational research

The role of critical emotional incidents should be further explored and utilised in educational research. According to VST perspective, emotional shifts may indicate cognitive changes (Vygotsky, 1987 ) and psychological development is made of perezhivanija (Vygotsky, 1994 ). Intense emotional incidents thus can be a fruitful site to explore change and development in an individual’s cognition. Indeed, this premise has been exploited in prior educational research (e.g. Golombek, 2015 ; Golombek & Doran, 2014 ). Golombek and Doran ( 2014 ) studied the role of emotions in the professional learning of English as a Second Language (ESL) student teachers by analysing reflective journals. They concluded that “[e]motional content indexes dissonance between the ideal and reality, offering potential growth points” (p. 102). By the same token, drawing on the concept of perezhivanie, Yang and Markauskaite ( 2021 ) explored student teachers’ dramatic emotional events as a developmental force for their epistemic agency.

Reading and interpreting Vygotsky’s texts

Finally, this paper also contributes to the discussion of how VST can be studied and interpreted more effectively. Given the influential impact of the theory in guiding educational practices and research, a more stringent analysis of Vygotsky’s texts is needed (Van der Veer & Yasnitsky, 2011 ). In line with Veresov ( 2019 ) and Van der Veer and Yasnitsky ( 2011 ), this paper indicates that scholars can generate themes that are more accurately representative of Vygotsky’s ideologies by performing a close reading and content analysis of Vygotsky’s selected texts on a given topic. At the same time, this paper calls for a more transparent and systematic methodology to be adopted by contemporary scholars in their efforts to interpret and advance Vygotsky’s legacy. Theoretical discussions of Vygotsky’s works are, however, insufficient as a replacement for real empirical research employing his genetic-experimental methodology (Fleer & Veresov, 2018 ; Veresov, 2010 ) to advance his theory given the structural-systemic epistemology of VST (Cong-Lem, 2022b ; Toomela, 2015 ).

The discussion of emotions from a Vygotskian perspective in this paper is not without limitation. First, the lack of details on the experiments described in Vygotsky’s text makes it challenging to assess the validity and reliability of their findings. Also, emotion is neither extensively theorised nor investigated in VST (Mesquita, 2012 ; Smagorinsky, 2021 ) and his perspective established in this paper drew mainly on his key texts on emotions. In addition, since Vygotsky’s discussion of emotions is more than 90 years old, some information presented in this paper may be of limited novelty to today’s emotion psychology and thus it would be more beneficial for consumers of this study to also seek further insights on emotion from contemporary research. Although somewhat hindered by these limitations, Vygotsky’s insights on emotions are still relevant and valuable for a more holistic understanding of emotion, a pervasive yet complex phenomenon that remains unsatisfactorily explained until today. Potential implications for research and practices are certainly not limited to those presented in this paper and educators/scholars should contextualise the theoretical tenets conceived in this paper to suit their practices.

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Ngo Cong-Lem. Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Dalat, Dalat, Vietnam. Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Clayton, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: ngoconglem.com

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Cultural-historical psychology. Teacher professional development. Second/foreign language acquisition.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Cong-Lem, N. (in press). Vygotsky’s, Leontiev’s and Engeström’s cultural-historical (activity) theories: Overview, clarifications and implications. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science . (SSCI).

Cong-Lem, N. (2022). Unravelling cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT): Leontiev’s and Engeström’s approaches to activity theory. Knowledge Cultures, 10 (1), 84–103. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc10120225 (Scopus).

Chakraborty, D., Soyoof, A., Moharami, M., Utami, A. D., Zeng, S., Cong-Lem, N., Hradsky, D., Maestre J.-L., Foomani, E. M., & Pretorius, L. (2021). Feedback as a space for academic social practice in doctoral writing groups. Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 38 (2), 238–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/20590776.2021.1972764 (Web of Science & Scopus).

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Cong-Lem, N. Emotion and its relation to cognition from Vygotsky’s perspective. Eur J Psychol Educ 38 , 865–880 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00624-x

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The relevance of a sociocultural perspective for understanding learning and development in older age

Tania zittoun.

a University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Aleksandar Baucal

b University of Belgrade, Serbia

This paper proposes a sociocultural psychology approach to ageing in the lifecourse. It proposes to consider sociogenetic, microgenetic and ontogenetic transformations when studying older age. On this basis, it considers that older people's lives have two specificities: a longer life experience, and a unique view of historical transformation. The paper calls for a closer understanding of the specific and evolving conditions of ageing, and for more inclusion of older citizens in public debate and policy making.

Ageing of the population is a major challenge from most countries in Europe, the USA and some Asian countries. The issue of age has mainly been addressed in terms of health, cognitive decline, socioeconomic and housing challenges, and more recently, in terms of exclusion and marginalization. However, for complex historical and cultural reasons, ageing is rarely understood in terms of learning and development. Interestingly, psychological research has long reflected common sense representations of age: childhood is meant to be a period of play, then learning; adulthood is characterized by working; and older age is defined by retirement. These representations also express or guide institutional arrangements: states invest in schools, professional support, and retirement homes. But what if we questioned these long-held assumptions: what if adulthood was also about playing, and more importantly, if old age was also about learning? In this paper, we start with the assumption that considering people over 65 in our societies as simply “retired” and “ageing” is a social, theoretical and, most importantly, ethical impasse. We believe that, in a context where medical progress and social conditions allows for people aged 60 to 65 (average formal retirement age) to live 15 to 20 years more (according to Eurostat), it is of foremost importance to redefine what is at stake during these years. People cannot be simply considered to be “ageing” for a quarter of their lives – imagine, in symmetry, if the whole literature on childhood and youth would simply be summarized by “growing up”! In this paper, we pose the first basis of a reconceptualization of “old age” in terms of learning and development. As part of a research group called AGILE – Ages for learning and growth: Sociocultural perspectives – we therefore have attempted to define a new theoretical frame, which allows accounting for learning and development in people growing older. In order to do so, we sketch a new theoretical frame to approach the development of the person with older age. We propose to apprehend ageing as part of three mutually dependent streams of processes: the sociocultural transformations that guide ageing; the course of life of the ageing person; and the day-to-day situations in which more or less old people meet and interact, in specific material and social settings. Doing so, we not only show the continuity of learning and development in people with older age, but we also try to highlight the specific modes of learning and experiencing that only being aged may bring about. We hope that our approach to ageing can allow us to transform and develop our practices and institutions, so as to establish more adequate relations to people who are characterized by being temporarily older than us – while we soon will be as old as them.

Finally, while this paper was being reviewed, the COVID-19 hit the world, with important consequences for the life of older persons; we conclude the paper with a short reflexion on the implications of our proposal.

1. Assumptions to approach development in older age

We aim at defining an approach to development in older age which is grounded on four assumptions. First, we examine the develop ing person all life-long, and not development as an outcome; development is thus understood in an open-systemic and relational way. Second, and in order to do so, life-long developing persons need to be understood in their sociocultural environments, these also being in transformation. Third, the approach needs to adequately account for the specificities of developing as an older person – older than others. Finally, we thus attempt to show how people can develop and maintain meaningful engagements in society ( Elder & Giele, 2009 ; Hviid & Villadsen, 2015 ; Teo, 2015 ; Valsiner, 2008 ; Valsiner et al., 2009 ; Zittoun et al., 2013 ).

On this basis, we will deliberately turn our back on individualistic approaches focused on the ageing person in isolation, as well as on approaches focused on the evolution, or rather decline, of specific functions (such as cognition or memory), or on studies that consider older age independently of the life-long of the person, or even, that start with normative assumptions about what may be a successful or positive ageing, − approaches which develop widely since the mid-1950's and are still exponentially growing (for recent synthesis, see Anderson & Craik, 2017 ; Biggs, 2005 ; Li, 2015 ; Park & Festini, 2017 ; Tournier, this issue ).

To develop such a theoretical frame, we draw on a sociocultural psychology of learning and development, which so far has been mainly focused on children, young adults and adults, as well as on the growing field of anthropological ( Droz-Mendelzweig, 2013 ; Lieblich, 2014 ; Sarason, 2011 ), critical gerontology, sociological and narrative approaches ( Freeman, 2011 ; Gubrium, 1995 , Gubrium, 2011 ), and clinical studies of the lives of older people ( Aumont & Coconnier, 2016 ; Bergeret-Amselek, 2016 ; Gutton, 2016 ; Quinodoz, 2008 ; Villa, 2010 ).

2. Theoretical framework

Sociocultural psychology is a theoretical approach to human experience and development that considers the mutual constitution of the person and their social and cultural world, as these dynamics are located in time and space; it also gives a central role to human experience and sense-making ( Cole, 1996 ; Rosa & Valsiner, 2018 ; Valsiner, 2012 ; Wertsch, 1998 ). Inspired by American pragmatism ( Dewey, 1938 ; James, 2007 ; Peirce, 1974 ) and Russian psychology ( Vygotsky, 1986 , Vygotsky, 1997 ), it is now a flourishing field. Some of its current sub-orientations such as narrative cultural psychology ( Bruner, 2003 ; Daiute, 2014 ), historico-cultural psychology ( Hedegaard et al., 2008 ), and semiotic cultural psychology ( Valsiner, 2014 ; Wagoner et al., 2014 ) meet in their dialogical epistemologies, and their interest for formal and informal learning as well as for human development ( César & Kumpulainen, 2009 ; Mäkitalo et al., 2017 ; Zittoun et al., 2013 ).

In these conditions, it is surprising that sociocultural psychology has very little addressed psychology of ageing – it is hardly surprising for Vygotsky, one of the main inspirations in the field who died aged 34 ( Zavershneva & van der Veer, 2018 ), but more so for more recent studies. Indeed, such silence reproduces a tendency visible in mainstream psychology, that is, a strong divide between psychology of the life-course—ending somewhere in mid-adulthood—and gerontology, considering older age mainly as it is accompanied by illnesses and other ailments ( Jeppson Grassman & Whitaker, 2013 ). There are however a couple of recent sociocultural studies of the older person, such as that of Manuti et al. (2016) , who propose a dialogical perspective that “implies the acknowledgement of elderly subjectivity inside social discourses and, as a consequence, the need for catching what they can say” ( Manuti et al., 2016 , p. 4), of authors focusing on the materiality of people's lives and can therefore adopt a mediated activity approach (e.g., Engeström & Sannino, 2016 ; Woll & Bratteteig, 2018 ) which examines care ( Boll et al., 2018 ).

Why has sociocultural psychology not studied ageing more? It may be that it has been privileging an analysis of the cultural conditions of growth which appeared more clearly in childhood; or perhaps it is due to the fact that, as a discipline, it has to be accountable for its existence, and thus studying learning and work in youth and adults can have more direct implications for practice. More generally, sociocultural psychology may also simply reflect a global tendency, both sociocultural and theoretical—an avoidance of thinking ageing and death: beyond a classic interest for ageing in Ancient Greece, modern psychology has long avoided the topic. Indeed, the preoccupation of the “fathers of psychology”, such as Piaget or Watson, did not find ageing relevant for their enquiry ( Birren & Schroots, 2001 ); in addition, studying ageing raises specific methodological challenges ( Säljö, this issue ). Here we aim at developing a more systematic and thorough definition of a sociocultural perspective on age. For this, we propose to approach developing ageing persons through an understanding of sociogenetic, microgenetic, and ontogenetic dynamics ( Duveen, 2013 ; Gillespie & Cornish, 2010 ; Zittoun, 2016 ).

2.1. A Sociogenetic view on ageing

Ageing cannot be approached today without an understanding of societies and their historical changes—beyond the obvious fact that older people have a very different status in communities where age is associated with wisdom than in industrialized societies. This includes three aspects that have been documented in ageing studies and critical gerontology, and that are linked to practices of social inclusion and boundary work, practical arrangements and affordances, and social representations.

First, one has to examine how various groups (nation states, region, and communities), as social collectives, explicitly or implicitly include, marginalize, or exclude their oldest members ( de Beauvoir, 1970 ). Such dynamics of exclusion for instance take place when older people are ignored in public debates about the role of older citizens or the future of society, or by a subtle logic of suspicion (e.g., in many countries people after a certain age have to test their driving capacities every year, independently of their actual state of health). Moreover, “age” as social category has to be understood in articulation with other categories: ageing poor or rich, ageing migrant, or ageing hetero- or homosexual might create specific dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion, recently addressed in terms of cross-sectionality ( Machat-From, 2017 ; Rosenberg et al., 2018 ).

Second, societies and their historical transformations have to be understood in terms of their institutions, and in industrialized societies, the policies that create the financial, symbolic and material conditions of living of the older citizens, and their related various affordances. Institutions define who is “retired” and when, what guarantees and rights people have after they have finished a working life (or, for non-working people, when they reach the same age). It is thus important to note that the consensus considering the “third age” starting at around 65 is aligned on the age of the pension ( Stuart-Hamilton, 2011 ). Institutions also define modes of housing for older citizens, urban arrangements and transports, allocations for home care, cultural offers such as Universities of Third Age, or cheaper museum entrance, etc. Developing as older person is thus radically different if one has a pension that covers 70% of the person's former salary and enables them to maintain their lifestyle, or if the pension falls beyond the 50% and demands the person to radically limit their expenses; if one lives in a town with low-buses or with no public transports, etc. ( Abramson, 2015 ; Aneshensel et al., 2016 ; Bengston, 2016 ; Quesnel-Vallée et al., 2016 ). However, it is important to note that older people still may define their lives, and create margins of freedom beyond the local institutional possibilities and constraints, as we will see.

Third, societies produce and are shaped by social representations and discourses on ageing and what “older people” are, and what they are expected to do or not to do. Important attention has been paid to “ageism” as the negative social representation of older age in societies that privilege youth and its appearance in terms of beauty, strength and performances ( Angus & Reeve, 2006 ; Casas, 2014 ; Nelson, 2005 ). In turn, older people have been said to develop resistance to their “mask of age” and become alienated ( Humberstone & Cutler-Riddick, 2015 ). Also, the emphasis on “successful”, “active” or “positive” ageing, both in psychology (since the 1960s) and in institutional and public discourses ( Balard, 2015 ; Havighurst, 1961 ; Rowe & Cosco, 2016 ), mostly individualizing “success” and ignoring sociocultural and economic conditions facilitating or impeding such modes of lives ( Bülow & Söderqvist, 2014 ), has brought some people to experience their own less-active older age as failure, even though it may be meaningful to them ( Stenner et al., 2011 ). However, with the development of critical perspectives on these categories, and also probably with the growing population of older active people, there is currently an increasing transformation of social representations of becoming older. This change can for instance be observed in a growing number of films depicting the realities of living with age ( Haneke, 2012 ; Sorrentino, 2015 ), an increased market of products targeting ageing persons (whether cosmetics, insurance, travel packages, clothing, etc.) or with fashion movement valorising the beauties of older people ( Campone, 2018 ).

Hence, at a sociogenetic level, we call for a careful analysis of the historical evolution and local specificities of the dominant discourses on ageing persons, the institutional arrangements setting conditions for older people's lives, and the differentiated dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion of elderly persons. Research needs to examine how older people meet these discourses, arrangements and dynamics in their everyday lives, and how they can negotiate, resist or accept them, for instance as empowering and supportive social scaffoldings for pursuing meaningful ageing. In this rapidly changing field, older people play an active role themselves, for instance through specific forms of political involvement (recently, the Swiss “Grand-Parents for the Climate”, 1 or the Danish “Grand-Parents for Asylum” [ Hviid, 2020 ]).

2.2. An ontogenetic view on ageing

A sociocultural psychological perspective also demands an understanding of the person in her context and along her life-course. In other words, it requires understanding the person in time, in a dynamic moment of their life: how the present is related to the past and how it is oriented toward the future. To move out of a negative representation of ageing as decline, a first step would be to abandon classic models of development that consider the lifecourse as a staircase or as a curve where ageing is designated by a declining slope (e.g., Sato et al., 2007 ; Sato et al., 2013 ; Zittoun et al., 2013 ). Drawing on recent theorisation, we propose to consider the course of life as constantly changing, and to conceptualize it as dynamic assemblage of spheres of experience ( Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015 ). Drawing on phenomenology on the one hand, and on more psychosocial descriptions of the frames of living on the other, the notion of “sphere of experience” describes an experiential unit that a person can recognize as “the same” over time, place, and relationships, and usually includes specific activities, modes of relating to others, range of feelings, aspects of one's identity or positioning, and certain specific knowledge or know-how. Spheres of experience can, for instance, include eating-with-good-friends, or gardening, or remembering one's childhood, or participate in a scientific inquiry as citizen scientist. Each occurrence of “eating-with-good-friends” may be located in different places and include different foods and conversations; yet it may be the overall “same” range of experience. These spheres may be “proximal” (they take in the here-and-now of specific material and social affordances) or “distal”, when they are achieved through a loop of imagining, such as “remembering one's childhood”. Over the day, people pass from one sphere to another through a “mild shock” ( Schuetz, 1944 ). However, new experiences may demand a radical reconfiguration of some spheres of experiences (such as an illness that prevents some type of food) or their destruction, as when a good friend dies and all the possibilities of joined experience disappear. New spheres of experience can also be created, such as when one moves to a new place—liminal experiences that we have coined as transitions ( Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015 ; Zittoun et al., this issue ).

In line with the main assumptions of lifecourse research, we assume of course the historical and social embeddedness of peoples' course of life, the fact that people's lives are interrelated, and that the results and timing of past event may constitute, enable or constrain current and future developments ( Elder, 1994 ; Janet Zollinger Giele & Elder, 1998 ). However, we are also very sensitive to people's capacities to “rewrite” their course of life, to find or create alternative developmental trajectories, and to live not only from what has been actually achieved or failed, but also, from what has been dreamed or anticipated, or from what has not come to be actualized but is still relevant ( Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016 ; Zittoun & Valsiner, 2016 ). It is also worth noticing that we conceptualize the persons' capacities not only as individual characteristics, but as capacities emerging from the relationship between individual capacities and sociocultural conditions, policies, institutions, discourses, and tools that enhance or limit, empower or disempower, support or prevent personal navigation and capacities during a lifecourse.

Altogether, the approach we propose brings us to highlight the fact that development occurs if, and only if, people can maintain a sense of continuity and integrity across their spheres of experience ( Erikson, 1959 ), and confer meaningfulness to their lives and future perspectives. The idea of meaningfulness may be described in several ways, but here we put emphasis on two main components. On the one hand, it implies “sense-making” of one's experience ( Bruner, 2003 ; Freeman, 2011 ), or “engagement” in significant activities ( Hviid, 2020 ; Hviid & Villadsen, 2015 ; Lido et al., 2016 ). It also entails a minimal orientation to the future, that has been called “creativity” of living ( Gutton, 2016 ; Winnicott, 2001 ; Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015 ), or “desire for life” ( Quinodoz, 2008 ; Villa, 2010 ), or “imagination” as way to go beyond the here-and-now and as existential tension to what has-to-come or could possibly occur ( Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016 ). On the other hand, meaningfulness can be related to meaningful interpersonal relationships, social recognition, and more generally, social inclusion ( Sarason, 2011 b). In this sense, meaningfulness or orientation to the future engage one's fundamental dialogicality ( Marková, 2016 ) with self and society, past and future, real and imaginary others, that is, an intention of living.

2.3. A microgenetic view in ageing

A sociocultural psychology perspective on ageing proposes to explore the making of the person and the social as a meeting between sociogenetic and ontogenetic dynamics precisely in specific activities and interactions, that is, at the level of microgenesis. It thus proposes to identify and examine socially situated experiences and practices in the making, in all kind of real and imaginary situations that constitute everyday life. Microgenetic dynamics take place in a wide range of situations and relationships, and have been studied with various focuses: in older people's daily interactions with neighbours, family members, or objects, or with objects mediating interpersonal interactions ( Aarsand, 2007 ; Iannaccone, 2015 ); as part of promenades in the urban, countryside, or institutional environment ( Badey-Rodriguez, 2003 ; Guglielmetti, 2015 ; Mallon, 2005 ; Meijering & Lager, 2014 ); as activities of learning, working, gardening, exercising ( Humberstone & Cutler-Riddick, 2015 ; Stenner et al., 2012 ); or as encounters with representatives of institutions, such as doctors or care practitioners ( Meijering & Lager, 2014 ; Mortenson et al., 2016 ; Sarason, 2011 ; Wapner et al., 1990 ). Hence, most aspects of daily life, from walking on the beach to remembering one's childhood, have been approached microgenetically ( Butler, 1963 ; Gubrium & Holstein, 1999 ; Lieblich, 2014 ). Studies have recently proposed to consider these socio-material environments as part of the conditions or the arrangements enabling life, such as for instance in studies on the “landscape of care” ( Milligan & Wiles, 2010 ). More generally, the invitation is to pay a close attention to the actual social, material, technical, spatial environments or “ecologies” of older people's lives, and to study the dynamic of their mutual co-constitution ( Säljö, this issue ). From the perspective proposed here, the socio-materiel environments are thus the settings in which people may support, or develop their spheres of experiences.

These microgenetic dynamics are, we believe, key-elements to document and understand the experience of becoming and being older; but we also claim that a sociocultural psychology of growing older can only be achieved by combining these dynamics with an understanding of the sociogenetic movement involved, and by preserving the unique perspective and experience of the person unfolding in time through ontogenesis.

3. The specificities of lives of older persons

Considering ageing as part of people's lifecourses from a triple socio-, onto- and microgenetic perspectives has the advantage of being integrative, but is not specific to older people's life. Our main theoretical innovation lies in the identification of the specificities of development in the life of older people, first in a rapidly changing environment, and second, as a result of life experiencing.

3.1. Rapidly changing sociocultural environments for ageing

The evolutions noted above create new life conditions for older people; as the generation of baby-boomers becomes older, we observe the making of new societal configurations. On the one hand, the societal and institutional conditions of living when growing older may differ across places. Life settings may radically vary, depending on local socioeconomic living conditions ( Abramson, 2015 ), or at the scale of nation-states. A recent international comparison thus shows that location (i.e., specific region/state) is the best explanation for variations in factual conditions of living and in the self-evaluated quality of life in older people, all others variables being controlled ( Stewart et al., 2018 ). Some national retirement systems make life difficult; others systems, which may appear better, have however for long privileged sending older people to retirement homes located at the periphery of cities or in the countryside, de facto marginalizing and excluding older citizens from the social arena.

On the other hand, however, these social and geographical inequalities are themselves in transformation. Institutional movements start to develop measures to fight against this tendency, for instance by rearrangements of the urban space to facilitate the mobility of frailer people, by developing intergenerational housing options (for instance in many Swiss cities) or by creating new city spaces to support meaningful engagement of older citizens (e.g., “The Old People's Playground Project” in London [ Perry & Blason, 2016 ]). As these conditions are rapidly growing, we have to keep a special attention on these: first, the existing or newly designed conditions may not correspond to what people getting older use to expect for their older age when they were younger. For instance, in many Eastern European countries, people grew up in three-generation houses with a grand-parent, and may have expected the same for themselves when they would reach the same age. However, with the rapid urbanization and professional mobility, this expectation is often not met, adding thus to the solitude of older people the disappointment of betrayed expectations. In contrast, in urban centres, people who may have feared growing old alone may now find new shared housing for older citizens, beneficiating from new and unexpected options. Second, the social categories of “older people” are also rapidly diversifying, some of them being the object of public discourses: there is currently a heightened sensitivity to gender inequalities, due to fact that former baby-boomers who may have had unconventional lifestyles now access older age; there is also an increased presence of an ageing migrant population.

These “new olds”, unequally social and geographically located, encounter national and institutional evolutions that were frequently designed without their active participation and that are currently evolving. Not only does society try to render meaningful the increase of older citizens, but older people have also a need to make sense of becoming older in this rapidly changing society, and to take part in reshaping it, with or without the younger generation. As the younger generations shape their own present and future living conditions, society would have everything to gain if they could do so in an inclusive, participative and dialogical way.

3.2. Unique life experiencing as people becoming older

Older people have the specificities of having a longer life experience and often of being released from engaging daily activities. This has some implications.

First, having lived longer lives, older people are more likely to have lived through more spheres of experiences, and more reconfiguration of spheres of experiences than younger people: many family or friend-related experiences, numerous professional situations, situations related to social life, events related to leisure activities, diverse cultural events. They may have witnessed the slow transformation of some of their spheres of experience and their relatedness with social changes, for instance through technological, economic, political, and cultural changes; they may have lived many ruptures, as some spheres disappeared, and others appeared. Going through these many experiences and changes, people may have learned from experience something valuable not only for them as individual persons, but for other related persons, and for the society in which they are engaged. For example, they may have developed more nuanced ways to address loss and newness, to handle the daily life and exceptional events, to deal with emotions and make sense of it. This may be called “learning from experience” ( Bion, 1989 ), or also, the development of personal life philosophies ( Valsiner, 2007 ; van der Veer & Valsiner, 1993 , p. 16; Zittoun et al., 2013 ) (comparable intuitions have been addressed by the notion of “wisdom” in psychology [ Baltes, 2004 ; Baltes & Kunzmann, 2004 ]). This may thus become people's life motives ( Thomae, 1968 ), “practical wisdom” and engagements ( Hviid, 2020 ), or “melodies of living” ( Zittoun et al., 2013 ).

Second, as people lived their lives, they may precisely have had the opportunity to experience many and diverse social changes and transformations as well: they lived through wars, economic crises, massive population movements, radical innovations, or political transformations. Experiencing first-hand sociogenetic dynamics as they were themselves developing may have brought them to identify historical or societal patterns of change, evolutions, or on the contrary, to radically change their views on the world. They may thus have developed “personal world philosophies” colouring their interpretation of social histories as well as their understanding and participation in social life ( de Saint-Laurent, 2017 ).

Depending on these two aspects (the development of personal life, and world philosophies) people becoming older may diversely engage in, or maintain activities that are meaningful to them and society. If we try to develop more general understandings of ageing, we thus need to consider the tensions between the developing persons and their evolving environment (and not only the person's functions or psyche), and to account for the diversity of dynamics taking place.

At one extreme, we may hypothesize that some older people have strong engagements within their spheres of experiences, to which they confer sense, and a clear orientation to the future; they also may have learned to read patterns in the social world. As a result, they may actively engage in, and create activities in which they find sense, inclusion and purpose, and feel that they can participate to societal changes. This is for instance the case of older people engaging in political action ( Caissie, 2011 ), as also exemplified in the case-study reported by Pernille Hviid (2020) .

At another extreme, older people may have developed negative representations of institutions and the social world, which, they feel, have closed down their opportunities to participate; excluded from social life, with spheres of experience that may be less satisfying, the may have very little occasions to produce meaningful activities and therefore to develop imaginations of their future. This is for instance the case of retiree in Serbia for which socioeconomic conditions are de facto marginalizing.

Finally, somewhere in between, people may be more or less satisfied with their social world, while having a set of good-enough engagements; thus, they may maintain a sense of orientation toward the future and create new sphere of experience even in relatively constraining situations. Such position is exemplified by the cases of people living in the retirement home who may find spaces of imagining and creating in the relatively limited zone of free movement left to them (Zittoun et al., this issue).

Identifying how older people's development emerges out of specific sociocultural environment may thus invite us to reflect on the condition that may facilitate life engagements and meaningfulness.

4. Implications for theory, practice and policy making

Our societies are largely changing in terms of structure of the population and economical balances, at a period where ecological and political challenges are everyday more present. The reality of the ageing of the population is undeniable, and societies expect a rapid increase of the proportion of older people in good health, ready to engage in meaningful living, even though they are excluded (or liberated) from active professional life. Older age thus constitutes the future of most of us.

It is therefore not only a theoretical imperative, but an ethical one as well, to include older persons in our society. We need to empower them and secure their involvement and voice in (re)shaping institutions and policies that have significant implications for their quality of life, as well as for the future courses of lives of others. This imperative is based on two key arguments. On the one hand, older people have the right to keep developing and live meaningful lives. On the other hand, and more specifically, they are also de facto the ones with the longest life experience, and are likely to remember the past, to have learned from the changing world, and from their own course of life. They may have much to contribute to our current and future situations, and it may be essential for our societies to rely on their experiences and philosophies as well.

As a consequence, as social scientists and educational researchers, as well as citizens, it is necessary to create conditions of participation, in which people can pursue meaningful lives, manifest, use and share their life experience, and become producers of the institutional conditions of their living.

While we have been finalizing this paper, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the everyday life of almost all people in the World, both in terms of their activities and their social relationships. It is especially true for the persons of older age since they have been recognized as sensitive group of citizens in many countries. Consequently, they have been the object of various sets of policies and practices related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to protect them, sanitary measures have resulted in social isolation, and interdiction to engage in the daily activities and social relationships through which their main engagements take place. Most older people had to question their projects and modes of lives; some were dramatically touched in their physical and mental health. In addition, in many countries, intergenerational resentment has been observed. One way or another, the great majority of older people have mostly been excluded from the debate and discussions related to their place and status during the crises – only the boldest have intervened in the media.

At this point in time (August 2020), it is hard to predict how the COVID-19 pandemic will transform ageing in many societies. However, this dramatic situation provides a strong case for the main thesis of our paper, illustrating how the three processes of social transformation, everyday interaction and the courses of life are intertwined, creating a knot of unique experiences demanding new forms of learning and development for many elderly persons around the world.

Acknowledgments

This article has been written thanks to an EARLI E-CIR grant, called AGILE (Ages for learning and growth: Sociocultural perspectives) which could meet for three years.

1 https://www.gpclimat.ch/qui-sommes-nous/

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What Is Sociocultural Theory?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

• Zone of Proximal Development
• Vygotsky vs. Piaget
• Applications

Frequently Asked Questions

Sociocultural theory is an emerging field of psychology that looks at the contributions of society to individual development. This theory has become increasingly prominent since the 1990s and can be applied in educational settings as well as in socialization and play.

Psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large are responsible for developing the brain's higher-order functions . According to Vygotsky, human development relies on social interaction and, therefore, can differ among cultures.

Sociocultural theory stresses the role that social interaction plays in psychological development . It suggests that human learning is largely a social process, and that our cognitive functions are formed based on our interactions with those around us who are "more skilled."

According to the sociocultural perspective, our psychological growth is guided, in part, by people in our lives who are in mentor-type roles, such as teachers and parents. Other times, we develop our values and beliefs through our interactions within social groups or by participating in cultural events.

Sociocultural theory focuses on how mentors and peers influence individual learning, but also on how cultural beliefs and attitudes affect how learning takes place.

History of Sociocultural Theory

Sociocultural theory grew from the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky , who believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large are responsible for developing higher-order functions. According to Vygotsky, learning has its basis in interacting with other people. Once this has occurred, the information is then integrated on the individual level.

Vygotsky contended that children are born with basic biological constraints on their minds. Each culture, however, provides "tools of intellectual adaptation." These tools allow children to use their abilities in a way that is adaptive to the culture in which they live.

For example, one culture might emphasize memory strategies such as note-taking. Another might use tools like reminders or rote memorization (a technique that uses repetition). These nuances influence how a child learns, providing the "tools" that are appropriate to their culture.

Vygotsky, born in 1896, was a contemporary of other great thinkers such as Freud , Skinner , and Piaget , but his early death at age 37 and the suppression of his work in Stalinist Russia initially left his theories less well-known. As his work has become more widely published, his ideas have grown increasingly influential in areas including child development, cognitive psychology , and education.

The Zone of Proximal Development

An important concept in sociocultural theory is known as the zone of proximal development. According to Vygotsky, this is "the distance between the actual development level (of the learner) as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers."

Essentially, it includes all of the knowledge and skills that a person cannot yet understand or perform on their own but is capable of learning with guidance. As children are allowed to stretch their skills and knowledge, often by observing someone who is slightly more advanced than they are, they are able to progressively extend this zone.

Some research has supported the validity of the zone of proximal development. For instance, one study reported that whether a student experiences test anxiety is influenced, in part, by whether they have someone available to provide assistance if needed. A 2013 case study connects this concept with how a student develops writing abilities.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget: Key Differences

Jean Piaget was a psychologist and genetic epistemologist known for his theory of cognitive development which outlines the four stages in which children learn. Since they are both theories of learning, Vygotsky's theory is often compared to Piaget's.

Social factors influence development

Development can differ between cultures

Childhood interactions and explorations influence development

Development is largely universal

How does Vygotsky's sociocultural theory differ from Piaget's theory of cognitive development ? First, while Piaget's theory stressed that a child's interactions and explorations impact development, Vygotsky asserted the essential role that social interactions play.

Another important difference between the two is that Piaget's theory suggests that development is largely universal and Vygotsky asserts that it can differ between cultures. The course of development in European culture, for example, might be different than in Asian culture.

Because cultures can vary so dramatically, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory suggests that both the course and content of intellectual development are not as universal as Piaget believed.

Some suggest that these two theories of human development differ greatly due to their founders' different upbringings and that Vygotsky had strong cultural ties while Piaget had a lonely childhood.

Applying Vygotsky's Theory

Sociocultural theory has gained popularity within certain settings. Here's how this theory can be put into practice in the real world.

In the Classroom

Understanding the zone of proximal development can be helpful for teachers. In classroom settings, teachers may first assess students to determine their current skill level. Educators can then offer instruction that stretches the limits of each child's capabilities.

At first, the student may need assistance from an adult or a more knowledgeable peer. Eventually, their zone of proximal development will expand. Teachers can help promote this expansion by:

• Planning and organizing classroom instruction and lessons. For example, the teacher might organize the class into groups where less-skilled children are paired with students who have a higher skill level. 
• Using hints, prompts, and direct instruction to help kids improve their ability levels.
• Scaffolding , where the teacher provides specific prompts to move the child progressively forward toward a goal.

In Socialization and Play

Vygotsky's theory also stressed the importance of play in learning. Vygotsky believed that through playing and imagining, children are able to further stretch their conceptual abilities and knowledge of the world. 

Teachers and parents can use this concept by providing children with plenty of opportunities for play experiences . Types of play that can foster learning include imaginary play, role-playing, games, and reenactments of real events. Such activities help promote the growth of abstract thought.

A Word From Verywell

Although Vygotsky's sociocultural theory only gained credence after his death, research has helped validate the role that those around us play in shaping how we develop as individuals.

Even though not everyone agrees as to the specifics of this development, as outlined in Piaget vs. Vygotsky, the sociocultural perspective does contribute to this understanding. It has also influenced other modern theories of human development, such as those that relate to cognitive growth and education.

Creating a collaborative learning environment is one way to use sociocultural theory in the classroom. This might involve pairing students with others of higher skill levels, or it could be by learning as a group versus having students learn on their own.

Teachers can also take advantage of the zone of proximal development by providing guidance and support to help the students reach their learning goals—particularly in an online learning environment.

The sociocultural perspective reinforces the role that people in mentor-like positions play in shaping who we become. This includes not just parents and teachers but also community leaders and others we model ourselves after.

If you are in one of these positions, it's important to recognize that you are shaping the development of the children around you. Because sociocultural theory also stresses the importance that culture plays in the process, this can help us better understand how our traditions and customs can influence future generations.

Sociocultural theory explains learning as a social practice while cognitive theory considers learning on a more individual level. With cognitive theory, learning is dependent on a person's mental processes. Thus, it is more focused on how the human mind works versus the impact that society plays in development.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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