Positive adult development

Last updated

Positive adult development is a subfield of developmental psychology that studies positive development during adulthood. It is one of four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified, according to Michael Commons; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. [1] Commons also further divided the concept of positive adult development into six distinct areas of study: hierarchical complexity (i.e., orders or stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality. [2]

Contents

The development of people has focused on children and adolescence with several theories as proposed by Freud, Piaget, and Binet. Research in positive adult development supports the theory that development occurs during adulthood. [3] Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health, life satisfaction, and degree of contribution to society. [4] Current research supports the idea that personal adjustment and personal growth are two main themes in positive adult development research. Personal adjustment refers to how well an individual is able to master and adapt to their environment, while personal growth refers to having the ability to have deep insight into oneself, others, and the world around them. [5] One other benefit is allowing for changes in social policies to create effective, efficient interventions to help optimize the aging process to as many of our aging generation as possible. [6] In these studies, adults that were older rated higher than these categories then those that were younger, thus supporting that there is indeed a positive development that occurs in adulthood.

Development of the field

Origins of the field

This field stems originally from several threads of work within psychology. Erik Erikson [7] proposed a number of adult periods. Daniel Levinson [8] also had described a number of "seasons of life." Abraham Maslow proposed an adult hierarchy of needs. And Jean Piaget came to agree there were adult postformal stages beyond the stage of formal operations, his earlier theory had located an endpoint to the development of cognitive structures, and wherein came to a conclusion at the adolescent's acquisition of formal operations. [9] John L. Horn [10] found that crystallized intelligence, represented by such things as vocabulary size, increased in adulthood. Robert Kegan [11] combined a Piagetian and an existential-phenomenological approach to create what he called constructive-developmental psychology. Lawrence Kohlberg [12] found that in early adulthood, some people come to think of moral, ethical and societal issues in multivariate terms (Systematic stage 11, the first postformal stage). They use multiple relations. During middle adulthood some become principled reasoners about moral issues; for instance, by using abstract principles to relate systems of rights to systems of duties (Meta systematic stage 12, the second postformal stage). Likewise, Cheryl Armon [13] found that by middle adulthood, some people could reason about interpersonal relationships at an order of complexity similar to that described by Lawrence Kohlberg.

Research on positive adult development have grown and expanded upon these early threads and theory's in a number of directions. Summaries of some of the initial positive adult development research can be found in the works of Commons, Richards, and Armon, [14] as well as in Alexander and Langer. [15] Four postformal adult stages of development beyond the formal stage have been discovered in a wide variety of domains. The total number of stages across the life span now stands at 15. Periods and Seasons have been described. [note 1]

A number of edited books were written on the topic of positive adult development in the 1990s [note 2] and more recently. [note 3] In the past decade, researchers have turned to investigating methods to foster positive development in educational as well as in organizational settings, rather than by just describing it and/or measuring it. These methods are used in organizational and educational setting. Some use developmentally designed, structured public discourse to address complex public issues. [17]

Directions of change in positive adult development

To determine whether a particular development in adulthood is positive or not, a value-judgment must be made about what kind of change in adult life is optimal or beneficial, and correspondingly what changes in adulthood are negative or deleterious. There are several competing standards for what constitutes positive development in adulthood, which can be broadly grouped into five directions; [18] orthogenetic (becoming more hierarchically complex), selective/adaptive (becoming more likely to pass on your genes and for offspring to survive and thrive), veridical (becoming less biased in your view of the world), eudemonic (becoming happier and healthier) and virtuous (becoming a better person from a particular moral or ethical standpoint). [19]

Studies have been conducted on various components of adult development. One such focused on the relationship between life experiences and optimism. [19] Another study (Helson, 2001), [20] presented three positive "paths" [20] a third followed the effects of attitudes of caring for others, which started in adolescence, and then continues into adulthood. [21] Each of the adult individual follows a path through adult development. These three paths were created using Environmental Mastery (EM) and Personal Growth (PG) scales developed by Carol D. Ryff. The three paths, identified as "Achievers", "Conservers", and "Seekers", were formulated from the patterns that resulted when Ryff's EM and PG tests were administered in the study. The Achievers scored high on both scales. The Conservers scored high on EM and low of PG. The Seekers scored low of EM and high on PG. All three paths were unique but all equally positive. This distinction was concluded to be the result of individual skill and motivation, with each individual's personal action creating personal strengths and personality features. The attributes of emotionality (both positive and negative), processes of identity, and the alterations in self-control across the adulthood years predicted the path classifications. Additionally, each path consisted of a strength profile on the "four criteria of maturity", [20] being competence, generativity, ego development, and wisdom.

Measurements in positive adult development

Assessment of positive adult development can measure quantitative (something that can be counted or measured) or qualitative (things described and cannot be measured in a numerical fashion) change. [18] Measurements of quantitative change assess change on a defined continuous variable, these variables would include such measures as IQ, reaction time, or indicators of personal maturity, authenticity or self-actualization. Quantitative change can be discontinuous, if a sudden step-change is in value, or continuous when changes occur gradually and incrementally.

Qualitative change is evidenced by a change in kind, rather than a change in amount, as exemplified by the switch from caterpillar to butterfly. Assessments of qualitative change in adulthood involve assigning written or numerical data to a stage within a defined stage model, according to defined assessment criteria. Researchers have developed a number of such instruments and methods to measure adult development stages, such as the moral judgment interview of Kohlberg, the Berlin Wisdom Interview, the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, the Subject-Object Interview, [22] and the model of hierarchical complexity.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ For critical discussion of the term "postformal thinking", see Kallio. [16] She claims that the highest forms of adult cognitive development (as part of adult positive development) can be called "integrative thinking" (i.e. integrating several different psychological domains as emotions, cognition etc.)
  2. ↑ Edited books written in the 1990s include:
    • Commons, M.L.; Richards, F.A.; Armon, C., eds. (1984). Beyond formal operations: Vol. I. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. New York: Praeger. ISBN   978-0-03-062559-6 . Retrieved 2022-01-09.
    • Commons, M. L., Armon, C., Kohlberg, L., Richards, F. A., Grotzer, T. A., & Sinnott, J. D. (Eds.). (1990). Adult development: Vol. 2. Models and methods in the study of adolescent and adult thought. New York: Praeger.
  3. ↑ Edited books written in the 2000s include:
    • Demick, J., & Andreoletti (Eds.).(2003). Handbook of adult development. New Jersey, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    • Hoare, C. (Ed.). (2006). Handbook of adult development and learning. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Developmental psychology</span> Scientific study of psychological changes in humans over the course of their lives

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.

Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive development, affect, motivation, self-regulation, and self-concept, as well as their role in learning. The field of educational psychology relies heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, to enhance educational activities related to instructional design, classroom management, and assessment, which serve to facilitate learning processes in various educational settings across the lifespan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Piaget</span> Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic

Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peer group</span> Primary group of people with similar interests, age, background, or social status

In sociology, a peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests (homophily), age, background, or social status. The members of this group are likely to influence the person's beliefs and behaviour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piaget's theory of cognitive development</span> Theory that discusses human intelligence from an epistemological perspective

Piaget's theory of cognitive development, or his genetic epistemology, is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was originated by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory.

Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Kohlberg began work on this topic as a psychology graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1958 and expanded upon the theory throughout his life.

In psychology, developmental stage theories are theories that divide psychological development into distinct stages which are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior.

Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch TV, anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egocentrism</span> Inability to differentiate between self and others

Egocentrism refers to difficulty differentiating between self and other. More specifically, it is difficulty in accurately perceiving and understanding perspectives other than one's own. Egocentrism is found across the life span: in infancy, early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion. Adults appear to be less egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an initially egocentric perspective than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt an egocentric perspective.

James William Fowler III (1940–2015) was an American theologian who was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. He was director of both the Center for Research on Faith and Moral Development, and the Center for Ethics until he retired in 2005. He was a minister in the United Methodist Church. Fowler is best known for his book Stages of Faith, published in 1981, in which he sought to develop the idea of a developmental process in "human faith".

The model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) is a framework for scoring how complex a behavior is, such as verbal reasoning or other cognitive tasks. It quantifies the order of hierarchical complexity of a task based on mathematical principles of how the information is organized, in terms of information science. This model was developed by Michael Commons and Francis Richards in the early 1980s.

According to Alberts, Elkind, and Ginsberg the personal fable "is the corollary to the imaginary audience. Thinking of themselves as the center of attention, the adolescent comes to believe that it is because they are special and unique.” It is found during the formal operational stage in Piagetian theory, along with the imaginary audience. Feelings of invulnerability are also common. The term "personal fable" was first coined by the psychologist David Elkind in his 1967 work Egocentrism in Adolescence.

Michael Lamport Commons is a theoretical behavioral scientist and a complex systems scientist. He developed the model of hierarchical complexity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melanie Killen</span> American psychologist

Melanie Killen is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and Professor of Psychology (Affiliate) at the University of Maryland, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. She is supported by funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research. In 2008, she was awarded Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the Provost's office at the University of Maryland. She is the Director of the Social and Moral Development Lab at the University of Maryland.

Moral development focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. The theory states that morality develops across a lifespan in a variety of ways and is influenced by an individual's experiences and behavior when faced with moral issues through different periods of physical and cognitive development. Morality concerns an individual's reforming sense of what is right and wrong; it is for this reason that young children have different moral judgment and character than that of a grown adult. Morality in itself is often a synonym for "rightness" or "goodness." It also refers to a specific code of conduct that is derived from one's culture, religion, or personal philosophy that guides one's actions, behaviors, and thoughts.

Role-taking theory is the social-psychological concept that one of the most important factors in facilitating social cognition in children is the growing ability to understand others’ feelings and perspectives, an ability that emerges as a result of general cognitive growth. Part of this process requires that children come to realize that others’ views may differ from their own. Role-taking ability involves understanding the cognitive and affective aspects of another person's point of view, and differs from perceptual perspective taking, which is the ability to recognize another person's visual point of view of the environment. Furthermore, albeit some mixed evidence on the issue, role taking and perceptual perspective taking seem to be functionally and developmentally independent of each other.

Developmental psychology initially focused on childhood development through Jean Piaget's four stages of human cognitive development, the last stage of which is known as the formal operational stage. Extending developmental psychology to adults, most neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development have posited one or more stages of postformal thought. Postformal thought is also addressed by some non-Piagetian theories of developmental psychology, including Michael Commons' model of hierarchical complexity and Otto Laske's constructive developmental framework.

Adolescent egocentrism is a term that child psychologist David Elkind used to describe the phenomenon of adolescents' inability to distinguish between their perception of what others think about them and what people actually think in reality. Elkind's theory on adolescent egocentrism is drawn from Piaget's theory on cognitive developmental stages, which argues that formal operations enable adolescents to construct imaginary situations and abstract thinking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Pascual-Leone</span> Developmental psychologist

Juan Pascual-Leone is a developmental psychologist and founder of the neo-Piagetian approach to cognitive development. He introduced this term into the literature and put forward key predictions about developmental growth of mental attention and working memory.

References

  1. ↑ Commons, Michael Lamport (2002). "Introduction: Attaining a New Stage". Journal of Adult Development. 9 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 155–157. doi:10.1023/a:1016099908688. ISSN   1068-0667. S2CID   140996925.
  2. ↑ Commons, Michael Lamport (2002-07-01). "Introduction: Attaining a New Stage". Journal of Adult Development. 9 (3): 155–157. doi:10.1023/A:1016099908688. ISSN   1573-3440.
  3. ↑ Staudinger, Ursula M. (May 2020). "The positive plasticity of adult development: Potential for the 21st century". American Psychologist. 75 (4): 540–553. doi:10.1037/amp0000612. ISSN   1935-990X. PMID   32378948. S2CID   218534430.
  4. ↑ Bidzan-Bluma, Ilona; Bidzan, Monika; Jurek, Paweł; Bidzan, Leszek; Knietzsch, Jessica; Stueck, Marcus; Bidzan, Mariola (2020-11-17). "A Polish and German Population Study of Quality of Life, Well-Being, and Life Satisfaction in Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic". Frontiers in Psychiatry. 11: 585813. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.585813 . ISSN   1664-0640. PMC   7705096 . PMID   33281646.
  5. ↑ Reitz, Anne K.; Staudinger, Ursula M. (2017-01-01), Specht, Jule (ed.), "14 - Getting older, getting better? Toward understanding positive personality development across adulthood", Personality Development Across the Lifespan, Academic Press, pp. 219–241, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-804674-6.00014-4, ISBN   978-0-12-804674-6 , retrieved 2024-10-01
  6. ↑ [Staudinger, U. M. (2020). The positive plasticity of adult development: Potential for the 21st century. American Psychologist, 75(4), 540–553. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000612 "The Positive Plasticity of Adult Development: Potential for the 21st Century"]. American Psychologist.{{cite journal}}: Check |url= value (help)
  7. ↑ Erikson, Erik H. (1978). Adulthood. W.W. Norton. ISBN   0-393-09086-8. OCLC   471636572.
  8. ↑ Levinson, D. J. (1978). Seasons of a man's life. New York: Knopf.
  9. ↑ Vuyk, R. (1981). Overview and critique of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology. 1965-1980, 2. Volumes, Academic, New York.
  10. ↑ Horn, J. L. (1970). Organization of data on life-span development of human abilities. In L. R. Goulet & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), Life-span developmental psychology: Research and theory (pp. 423–466). New York: Academic Press.
  11. ↑ Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  12. ↑ Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Essays on moral development. San Francisco: Harper & Row
  13. ↑ Armon, C. (1984). "Ideals of the good life and moral judgment: Ethical reasoning across the lifespan". In Commons, M.L.; Richards, F.A.; Armon, C. (eds.). Beyond formal operations: Vol. I. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. New York: Praeger. ISBN   978-0-03-062559-6 . Retrieved 2022-01-09.
  14. ↑ Commons, M.L.; Richards, F.A.; Armon, C., eds. (1984). Beyond formal operations: Vol. I. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. New York: Praeger. ISBN   978-0-03-062559-6 . Retrieved 2022-01-09.
  15. ↑ Alexander, C., & Langer, E. (Eds.). (1990). Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
  16. ↑ Kallio, Eeva (2011-11-02). "Integrative thinking is the key: An evaluation of current research into the development of adult thinking". Theory & Psychology. 21 (6). SAGE Publications: 785–801. doi:10.1177/0959354310388344. ISSN   0959-3543. S2CID   143140546.
  17. ↑ Ross, S. N. (2007). Effects of a structured public issues discourse method on the complexity of citizens' reasoning and local political development. Dissertation Abstracts International B, 68 (02). (UMI No. 3251492).
  18. 1 2 Robinson, O.C. (2012). Development through adulthood: An integrative sourcebook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  19. 1 2 Schwaba, Ted; Robins, Richard W.; Sanghavi, Priyanka H.; Bleidorn, Wiebke (November 2019). "Optimism Development Across Adulthood and Associations With Positive and Negative Life Events". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 10 (8): 1092–1101. doi:10.1177/1948550619832023. ISSN   1948-5506. S2CID   150892197.
  20. 1 2 3 Helson, Ravenna; Srivastava, Sanjay (2001). "Three paths of adult development: Conservers, seekers, and achievers". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 80 (6): 995–1010. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.995. ISSN   1939-1315. PMID   11414379.
  21. ↑ Hutchinson, Delyse; Youssef, George J.; Buhagiar, Adrienne; Teague, Samantha; Macdonald, Jacqui A; Letcher, Primrose; Greenwood, Chris; McIntosh, Jennifer; Toumbourou, John W.; Hallam, Bill W.T.; Skouteris, Helen; Sanson, Ann; Olsson, Craig A. (January 2019). "Adolescent Care-Orientation and Positive Development in Young Adulthood". Journal of Adolescent HealthJournal of Adolescent Health. 63–69. (64(1): 63–69. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.07.024. PMID   30579438. S2CID   58662739 – via Science Direct.
  22. ↑ Lahey, L., Souvaine, E., Kegan, R., Goodman, R. & Felix, S. (2011). A guide to the subject-object interview: Its administration and interpretation. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.