Positive adult development is a subfield of
developmental psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, 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 deve ...
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
Michael Lamport Commons (b. 1939) is a theoretical behavioral scientist and a complex systems scientist. He developed the model of hierarchical complexity.
Life and work
Michael Lamport Commons was born in 1939 in Los Angeles and grew up in Hol ...
; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Commons divided positive adult developmental processes into at least six areas of study:
hierarchical complexity (i.e., orders or
stages
Stage or stages may refer to:
Acting
* Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions
* Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage"
* ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper
* S ...
),
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
,
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
,
expertise
An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable s ...
,
wisdom
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, ...
, and
spirituality
The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...
.
The development of people has focused on children and adolescence with several theories as proposed by
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
,
Piaget Piaget () may refer to:
People with the surname
* Édouard Piaget (18171910), a Swiss entomologist
* Jean Piaget (18961980), a Swiss developmental psychologist
* Paul Piaget (disambiguation), several people
* Solange Piaget Knowles (born 1986) ...
, and
Binet. Research in positive adult development supports the theory that development occurs during adulthood. Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health,
life satisfaction
Life satisfaction is a measure of a person's well-being, assessed in terms of mood, relationship satisfaction, achieved goals, self-concepts, and self-perceived ability to cope with life. Life satisfaction involves a favorable attitude towards on ...
, and degree of contribution to the society. In those studies, those that were older rated higher than 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
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
.
Erik Erikson
Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity cr ...
proposed a number of adult periods.
Daniel Levinson
Daniel J. Levinson (May 28, 1920 – April 12, 1994), a psychologist, was one of the founders of the field of positive adult development. Levinson is most well known for his theory of stage-crisis view, however he also made major contributions ...
had described a number of "seasons of life."
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Harold Maslow (; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, cul ...
proposed an adult
needs hierarchy.
Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
came to agree that there were adult
postformal stages beyond the stage of formal operations; his earlier theory had located an endpoint to the development of cognitive structures in the
adolescent's acquisition of formal operations. John L. Horn found that crystallized intelligence, represented by such things as vocabulary size, increased in adulthood.
Robert Kegan
Robert Kegan (born August 24, 1946) is an American developmental psychologist. He is a licensed psychologist and practicing therapist, lectures to professional and lay audiences, and consults in the area of professional development and organizati ...
combined a
Piagetian
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Switzerland, Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's Piaget's theory of cognitive development, theory of cognitive development and epistemol ...
and an
existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...
-
phenomenological
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
approach to create what he called constructive-developmental psychology.
Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg (; October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.
He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Gra ...
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 people become principled reasoners about moral issues; for instance, they used abstract principles to relate systems of rights to systems of duties (Metasystematic stage 12, the second postformal stage). Likewise, Cheryl Armon 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 grew and expanded upon these early threads in a number of directions. Summaries of some of that initial positive adult development research can be found in Commons, Richards, and Armon, as well as in Alexander and
Langer. 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.
A number of edited books were written on the topic of positive adult development in the 1990s
[Edited books written in the 1990s include:
*
*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.
] and more recently.
[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.
] In the past decade, researchers have turned to investigating methods to foster positive development in educational and organizational settings, rather than just describe it and/or measure it. These methods are used in organizational and educational setting. Some use developmentally-designed, structured public discourse to address complex public issues.
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;
[Robinson, O.C. (2012). ''Development through adulthood: An integrative sourcebook''. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.] 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).
Studies have been conducted on various components of adult development. One such focused on the relationship between experiences and optimism. Another study (Helson, 2001),
presented three positive "paths"
each adult individual follows in 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",
being competence, generativity, ego development, and wisdom.
Measurements in positive adult development
Assessment of positive adult development can measure quantitative or qualitative change.
Measurements of quantitative change assess change on a defined continuous variable, such as IQ, reaction time, or indicators of personality maturity such as authenticity or self-actualization. Quantitative change can be discontinuous, if a sudden step-change is in value, or continuous when changes occur gradually and incrementall
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 Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT) is a sentence completion test created by Jane Loevinger, which measures ego development along Loevinger's stages of ego development. The WUSCT is a projective test; a type of psychometric t ...
, the Subject-Object Interview,
[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.] and the
model of hierarchical complexity
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 ...
.
Notes
References
{{Human psychological development
Developmental psychology