Entering a Study Path

“From country girl in Southern Finland to longitudinal research into alternatives to aggression and violence” was how Professor Richard Tremblay (2021) titled my article in the book he edited on the contributions of the World War II generation to the science of violent behavior development and prevention. I was almost five years old when my father returned from the war in 1944. My childhood home was located a few kilometers from the manor owned by my grandparents on my father’s side: it had provided my mother and her children with material and psychological security during the war.

Here I describe my intertwined trajectories of personal life, studies, scientific work, international activities, and the application of research findings. For a girl born in 1939 without an academic family background, the likelihood of a scholarly career was small. I went to a country school around four kilometers from home to which I walked or skied in winter. There were two teachers, one for grades 1–2 and the other for grades 3–6. After finishing sixth grade, children generally went to work without further education. Encouraged by my teacher, my parents decided to take me at age ten to sit an entrance exam for the secondary school in Heinola, a small town around twenty kilometers away.

Attending the secondary school meant moving away from home. Due to the six-day school week, I could only spend Saturday night at home. My parents had found me a place to stay in town, but my landlady did not take a proper care of me. With the help of the piano teacher my father had arranged for me, I found a new place to live. As I have recounted in my autobiography (Pulkkinen, Reference Pulkkinen2022), I had made my first independent decision to move, and so with a classmate, also an eleven-year-old girl, I literally carried my bed loaded with my few books and clothes to her home.

As a child, I had told people who asked me what I was going to do as an adult that I would not be a housewife or farmer, for me the most common models, to which I later added entrepreneur. I had seen how hard my father’s life as a businessman was in the postwar left-wing political atmosphere. He had established a cement foundry and had around fifty employees. My mother had wished to become a schoolteacher, but her farmer parents sent her to a domestic skills school. Thus, she remained at home as a wise and good mother to her four daughters.

Whereas most students left school after five years of lower secondary education, I went on to upper secondary school, matriculating three years later in spring 1958, along with about 7 percent of my age cohort. My father wanted me to study medicine, but I did not aim at this for two reasons. One was that I had not taken biology courses in upper secondary school due to a disappointing teacher; and the other was that my boyfriend considered it too ambitious for a woman. My father was worried about my lack of study plans and said to me while working in his business office after my graduation at age eighteen: “Be sure, you cannot continue working here!” I grew uneasy: What to do? I had heard about the establishment of the Liberal Arts Faculty at the Pedagogical Institute in Jyväskylä, and with the help of a telephone operator managed to make a telephone call that was eventually connected to the rector. To my disappointment, the rector said that the deadline for applications had gone. He asked, however, my credentials at school, and thereafter, the three subjects (needed in an application) that I wished to study. In my turn, I asked him what it was possible to study there. He listed Finnish language (his own discipline), literature, psychology, history, English language – I listed in the same order: Finnish language, literature, and psychology. He encouraged me to submit my application in case of cancellations, that resulted in my admission.

I was happy about this outcome, but my father was not. I was the eldest child and perhaps, lacking a son, he expected from me a more ambitious study program. Unfortunately, he died from a heart attack at age forty-seven, after my third university year, and thus never saw what I subsequently achieved.

A Window on Science

I soon noticed that I was not a linguist; instead, I found the lectures given by Martti Takala, a young professor of psychology, very inspiring. His way of introducing psychology showed me how psychological knowledge was empirically acquired. He was critical about research methods and conclusions, and I learned to understand that what was written was not all necessarily true. A window on scientific thinking had been opened for me.

At the beginning of my second year, I changed my major to psychology, while continuing with Finnish language and literature, which increased my understanding of humanistic thinking and research and aided my academic writing. Interestingly, I later married a professor of Finnish, Paavo Pulkkinen (1930–2018). But before this, another love story intervened.

During the second semester, a course in psychometrics was included in my program. I had been interested in mathematics and taken natural sciences in upper secondary school instead of the languages that girls tended to study. When I learned that mathematics could be utilized in psychology, I was overjoyed. My psychometrics teacher, a bachelor, noticed my enthusiasm and took an interest in me; and eighteen months later, in 1960, we married, and my last name changed from Marttunen to Pitkänen.

By 1961, at age twenty-one, I had transitioned from the role of student to that of a faculty member’s spouse, to that of a faculty member (as an assistant to Professor Takala), and with the birth of my first child, a daughter, to that of a mother. I had also taken my BA degree. There were dramatic episodes in this process, mainly because during my second semester I was engaged to my schooltime boyfriend who was aiming at studying architecture in Helsinki. I loved him, but I also was enthusiastic about the science of psychology and my opportunity to do research work that my new relationship facilitated. I could not think of living anywhere else but in Jyväskylä. Thus, at age twenty, I mixed my evolving identity processes in the occupational and human relationships domains.

Professor Takala led a reading seminar for faculty members. It was there, while reading and discussing the significant Birth to Maturity book by Kagan and Moss (1962), that I first learned about longitudinal research. I was thrilled. At school, I used to amuse myself by trying to imagine what kind of adults the children I knew would become in the future, and what kind of children the adults I knew had been in the past. I now learned that somebody had studied this very topic.

Takala’s project, in which I worked as an assistant, concerned children’s motivational characteristics as defined by Henry Murray: need for achievement, affiliation, and aggression. My task was to collect data, and these data puzzled me. Why was it that different outcome measures such as teacher ratings, self-reports, and tests did not correlate. I thus became critical of the definition of motivational concepts and the methods we were using. I am grateful to my supervisor and mentor Martti Takala for introducing me to psychological science and accepting my critical thinking and choice of independent research avenues.

Building a Scientific Career

For the first part of my doctoral dissertation (Pitkänen, Reference Pitkänen1969), I chose aggression for closer analysis and started exploring definitions and research on the concept in the literature. This led me to develop a multidimensional model of aggressive behavior that comprised three main dimensions: one for the intensity and two for the quality of aggression – defensive (reactive) versus offensive (proactive) aggression, and direct versus indirect aggression. I tested the model with kindergarten teachers’ observations of boys’ behavior in 1964 and found interesting results. They showed, for instance, that teacher ratings of children’s aggression were mainly affected by the frequency of their proactive aggression. Children who were ready to defend themselves but were never proactively aggressive were not considered aggressive but, rather, assertive. This study was the start of my decades-long research on aggression as described in the Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression (2018).

For the second part of my dissertation, I wanted to study positive behaviors after having seen that only a relatively small portion of children were often aggressive. The psychological research that shaped my research field in the 1960s typically focused on problem behaviors. Positive social behavior only became a major target of study in the late 1970s (e.g., Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg, 1977). I approached the issue of non-problem behaviors by searching for alternatives to aggression. According to classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, people have impulses in the id structure of their personality, the expression of which the ego tries to regulate. I reasoned, however, that the human brain allows for more variation in social behavior than simply the “fight or flight” highlighted in animal learning research. I speculated that human beings have a cognitive capacity for reflecting on their own behavior, intentions, and emotions, and for exercising control over or regulating their emotional behavior. This was a novel idea, because it was typical of that time to see “sense and sensibility,” that is, rational thinking and feelings, as separate entities. A functional approach to the study of emotion and mood regulation did not emerge until the late 1980s (Morris & Reilly, 1987). Emotional regulation was defined as the process “by which emotional arousal is redirected, controlled, modulated, and modified to enable an individual to function adaptively in emotionally arousing situations” (Cicchetti, Ganiban, & Barnett, 1991).

I devised a two-dimensional impulse control model in which overt reactivity and control of behavior define four types of socioemotional behavior. Active behavior in a thwarting situation may be less controlled (aggressive) or more controlled (constructive), and correspondingly, passive behavior may be less internally controlled (anxious) or more controlled (adaptive). I conducted an empirical study in 1968 with eight-year-old children using peer nominations and teacher ratings of more than thirty behaviors, such as “Which of your classmates may hurt another child when angry, e.g., by hitting, kicking, or throwing something?” (aggressive); “Who of them try to act reasonably even in annoying situations?” (constructive); “Who of them easily start crying if others are nasty to them?” (anxious); and “Which of your classmates are peaceable and patient?” (adaptive). The results validated the importance of cognitive control of emotional behavior for individual differences in socioemotional behavior.

In the dissertation’s discussion section (Pitkänen, Reference Pitkänen1969, 190), I stated that “A longitudinal study would make it possible to examine the stability of the individual patterns of behaviour.” Gradually, my cross-sectional study transitioned into a long-term longitudinal study. Data were further gathered at ages 14, 20, 27, 36, 42, and 50 (in 2009). In the 1970s, research funding was almost nonexistent for young researchers in Finland. Fortunately, a group of masters’ students decided to join me in conducting a follow-up study for which we traced 96 percent of the original sample (now aged fourteen). I also collected data with the help of Masters’ students at age twenty with little finance for running costs. The funding situation improved for data collection at age twenty-seven, but it was only at participant age thirty-six, in 1995, when I obtained my first sizable grant for hiring a research group, supplemented by generous support thereafter from the Academy of Finland. Lifespan and life course approaches to human development that emerged as significant subdisciplines encouraged me to continue this longitudinal study. The study was titled the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS). In Finnish it was known as “Lapsesta aikuiseksi” [From child to adult].

In 2004, having reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five I was forced to retire. However, my research trajectory continued as a pensioner, and I directed the study until 2012. My former student and colleague Katja Kokko, Research Director of the Gerontology Research Center at the University of Jyväskylä, has directed it ever since and collected the latest data at participant age sixty. Among the many central findings: emotional regulation in childhood and adolescence was shown to be connected to adult development in personality and well-being, family, career and work, health and health behavior, and to antisocial behavior. Data were analyzed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in psychology, medicine, economics, and statistics (Pulkkinen, Reference Pulkkinen2017).

My personal trajectory: another longitudinal study I was involved in was the ongoing study of social behaviors and health in twins (FinnTwin12) from age twelve to adulthood. The sample comprised all twin children born in Finland between 1983 and 1987. Funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) with Richard Rose, Professor of Psychology and Medical Genetics at Indiana University, as the Principal Investigator, and Jaakko Kaprio, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Helsinki, and myself as the co-PIs, this multidisciplinary research has been very productive in terms of international publications in many disciplines (Rose et al., Reference Rose, Salvatore, Aaltonen, Barr, Bogl, Byers, Heikkilä, Korhonen, Latvala, Palviainen, Ranjit, Whipp, Pulkkinen, Dick and Kaprio2019).

In the 1980s, women were accepted as associate professors, but gender discrimination (“a glass ceiling”) threatened their further promotion, as I also had to experience (Pulkkinen, Reference Pulkkinen2022). I was very relieved at my appointment as a full professor in 1990 and my creative energy was released. I was later appointed an Academy Professor without teaching load (1996–2001) and became director of the national Center of Excellence on Human Development and Its Risk Factors (1997–2005) with a staff of around seventy persons. As a result of my achievements, I have received national and international awards, including the prestigious Finnish Science Prize in 2001, the Aristotle Prize in 2003, and the Honorary Prize of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2023 for my lifetime work.

Doors Opened to the World

Early in my education I had understood that to build a postdoctoral academic career I would need to undertake further studies abroad. Thus I obtained a British Council scholarship, packed my two daughters into the car, and headed to Sussex University in the south of England to study social psychology during the 1972–73 academic year. My postdoctoral supervisor was Professor Marie Jahoda, my first and only female teacher in my academic studies. She advised me in writing a scientific article from my own research data and using a new interview technique for qualitative research. The study concerned Ugandan Asians who, expelled by Idi Amin, were settling in London. The following year I returned to Jyväskylä University as an associate professor in psychology. I remarried in 1975 and was legally obliged to change my last name to Pulkkinen. That was difficult, and for some time I authored publications under the name Pitkänen-Pulkkinen.

For a researcher in a small country (population around 4.5 million), with only a handful of colleagues in the same field, international contacts are important. My trajectory of international activities developed via interesting chains of acquaintances in two learned societies. The first chain started when Professor Kirsti Lagerspetz (1932–2001), the external reviewer of my dissertation, encouraged me to attend the first meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) held in Toronto in 1974. There, among others, I met Prof. Seymour Feshbach (1925–2020), who with Dr. Adam Fraczek (1935–2020) co-organized an international conference on aggression in Warsaw, Poland in 1976, and invited me to participate. My symposium chair was Prof. Paul Mussen, Director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He was interested in my search for alternatives to aggression, invited me to Berkeley a year later, and in turn introduced me to Prof. Jack Block and his wife Jeanne, who had similar goals. Paul and I became lifelong friends, and I stayed several times in his and Ethel’s Berkeley Hills home, actually sleeping in the same bed Jean Piaget had slept in, as Paul noted with a smile. As my trajectory shows, the Finnish policy of providing young researchers with travel grants to conferences is invaluable.

In addition to ISRA meetings, I attended meetings of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD), first in Lund, Sweden, in 1979. My symposium chair there was Prof. Paul Baltes who was interested in my work on self-control and invited me to contribute a chapter to a book he was editing with Orville Brim (1982) and to perform some administrative tasks in ISSBD. Consequently, I chaired the 10th Biennial Meetings of the ISSBD in Jyväskylä, Finland, in 1989, and became President of ISSBD (1991–1996).

I traveled to all continents, met researchers, and witnessed different living conditions. In particular, the workshops we organized in Africa expanded my worldview. For me, this was a rich period. Another important experience was serving as a visiting professor at Arizona State University in Fall 1993 while Nancy Eisenberg was on leave of absence from her professorship.

The trajectories of international activities and scientific research were intertwined with my widening opportunities to examine what was happening in my field of study both theoretically and methodologically. For example, in 1984, I visited Prof. Urie Bronfenbrenner at Cornell University and saw the first personal computer in his office. Given he was enthusiastic about it, I thought that if he, an older man, had learned to use it, I shall also learn. So, at home, my son-in-law, an IT expert, helped me to start a new phase in my scientific career aided by an Apple IIC. International contacts were also useful for choosing assessment methods for the JYLS that would make its results comparable with those of other longitudinal studies. Such comparative analyses were facilitated by the Center for Analysis of Pathways from Childhood to Adulthood (CAPCA), a network of researchers where I was a member from 2003 to 2013. The network was established by the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, and organized by Dr. Pamela Davies-Kean.

Applying Research Findings

While I had strong theoretical interests in individual differences in socioemotional development, I was also always interested in the application of research findings. One indicator of this is that half of my 600 publications are in Finnish, as I have considered it important to offer scientific knowledge to my fellow citizens in their native language. For a researcher, this often doubles the workload, as freeing oneself from scientific jargon demands extra effort.

In 1977, with my masters’ students I developed and published perhaps the world’s first program for advancing prosocial behavior through emotional regulation. The English title of the book is Guiding My Child: A Program for Developing Self-control in Children. For many years it was widely used in Finnish day care centers. Our research findings confirmed that the program reduced children’s aggressive behavior (Pitkänen-Pulkkinen, Reference Pitkänen-Pulkkinen, van Lieshout and Ingram1977).

My interest in applied work arose from my observation that teaching and research in the Faculty of Education, where I had been an associate professor for two years after my doctorate, were directed at schooling and not at all at children’s home upbringing. The Finnish word for education (kasvatus) means promoting overall development both at home and school. I focused on home upbringing in my book Kotikasvatuksen Psykologia [Psychology of Home Upbringing] published in 1977, which was based on the results of the JYLS at participant age fourteen. At that point, in the 1970s, a day care system was being developed in Finland to allow mothers to work outside the home, while parents’ role in their children’s development was largely ignored. The book filled a gap and received much interest, leading to invitations to contribute my thoughts on various current issues. I was even elected the country’s “Woman of the Year” in 1983.

As a member of a parliamentary committee established in 1979 for this purpose, I contributed to the preparation of legislation on the goals of day care by highlighting the importance of cooperation between home and day care, permanent caretakers, of homelike rather than school-type conditions in day care, and of children’s own activities rather than formal teaching. The resulting national Act remained in force for thirty-two years. In 2015, it was amended in line with the education movement aimed at competing successfully in a global economy. That reflected the fact that, in the 2010s, we had returned to the situation in the 1970s when professional teaching took precedence over children’s care and the role of the parents. In a related way, I wrote a research-based book (2022) titled in English A Child’s Well-being Begins at Home, advocating a new version of Psychology of Home Upbringing. I highlighted a holistic conception of a child as an actor who simultaneously, in interaction with their closest ones and immediate environment such as day care, develops physically, socially, emotionally, cognitively, esthetically, ethically, and spiritually, and thus experiences well-being.

Earlier, in the 1980s, I started working towards the founding of a family research center at the University of Jyväskylä with colleagues from education, special education, and sociology, and subsequently volunteered to lead a small family research unit. Fourteen years later, with the support of the female rector of the university, a professorship in family research was established. As the only one of its kind in Finland, The Family Research Center became well-known, and its external evaluations were very positive. Unfortunately, the next rector, male, quietly terminated the Center in 2015. In a similar way, a human-centered technology center, Agora, was terminated in 2017. I had worked for its establishment and success with researchers in information technology since the turn of the millennium.

Future Directions

While seeking a solution to a problem, creative scientific thinking utilizes and reorganizes the knowledge acquired by a person. Scientific advancement through accumulating knowledge can also be seen in the concepts I have used to explain interindividual differences in regulating socioemotional behavior: ego control, cognitive control, self-control, and self-regulation. My hypothesis that cognitive, social, and emotional behavior share a common regulatory mechanism anticipated current knowledge on the forebrain’s executive control. Our findings have confirmed that executive functions are differentially related to different socioemotional behaviors (Pulkkinen, Reference Pulkkinen2017, pp. 56–58). Similarly, my search for alternatives to aggression preceded the positive psychology movement that resulted from critique of the illness ideology in psychology and the parallel recognition of a need to focus on psychological health and adaptation that emerged in the 1990s (see Snyder & Lopez, 2005).

Each generation of students and researchers has a new collection of knowledge at their disposal for the solution of problems. Once a problem arises, one must work hard at delineating its roots and examining previous explanations, be critical of methods of assessing it, develop new ways of seeing and studying it, learn new methods, and aim at holistic understanding of the phenomenon and what it says or implies about being human. I have learned that working in an interdisciplinary team facilitates the opening of new windows. At present, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming part of contemporary life. I believe that it will complement knowledge achieved by statistical methods with a more nuanced understanding of individuals’ life experiences and development. For example, qualitative data from interviews with an unlimited number of people could be rapidly analyzed using AI.

Also, brain research has advanced during this millennium and has increased understanding of human behavior and development. This line of research will continue and strengthen. At the same time, it is the task of developmental psychologists to think of a human being in a way that is not limited to the somatic nervous system. Another exciting approach to the factors affecting human development might be found in study of the epigenetic regulatory system through collaboration with researchers in molecular genetics.

Finally, reflection on the role of developmental psychological knowledge in various societal contexts is needed. The concept of lifespan development emphasizes the need for knowledge about development from childhood and youth to adulthood and late life. There are numerous aspects of adult learning, family and work life, leisure, physical and mental health, antisocial behavior, climate change, immigration, economic crises, and other domains for which developmental psychological knowledge could be used to enhance people’s well-being. Basic and applied research conducted in teams with experts in other fields should therefore be encouraged.