What is behind positive deviant attitudes?
Conclusion Defined loosely, for the purposes of this paper, positive deviance studies examine the performance of mothers who are successful in maintaining their children’s nutrition and health under conditions of poverty in which most children are failing to do so. Positive deviants are children of those mothers who grow and develop adequately living in impoverished environments where the majority of peers suffer from growth retardation and malnutrition. Positive deviance has been seen as a form of social, behavioral and physiologic adaptability to nutritional stress in a process that apparently overcomes adversity. Positive deviance, therefore, focuses on psychosocial and behavioral considerations. This places it in an evolutionary context as a form of adaptation and implies that attitudinal problems may be at the root of malnutrition and ill-health. The Zeitlin et al. (1990) monograph has presented the nutrition community with a model for conducting “program-relevant” research into p
