Introduction to Psychology: Psychosocial Development

Psychosocial Development

• The process by which a person’s sense of self emerges as the result of interactions between his or her social and personal side

Epigenetic Principle

• Erik Erikson proposed that the stages of development follow the Epigenetic Principle
• Biological plan for growth that allows each function to emerge systematically until the fully functioning organism has developed
  • Although one can anticipate challenges that will occur at a later stage, one passes through the stages in an orderly pattern of growth
  • There is no going back to an earlier stage because experience makes retreat impossible
  • One can review and reinterpret previous stages in the light of new insights and experiences
  • Themes of earlier stages may reemerge
• Do not think of stages as pigeonholes
  • Just because a person is described as being at a given stage does not mean that he or she cannot function at other levels
  • At every successive developmental stage, the individual is also increasingly engaged in the anticipation of tensions that have yet to become focal and in re-experiencing those tensions that were inadequately integrated when they were focal

Preschool Years

• Infancy
  • Birth to 2 years
  • Maturation of sensory, perpetual, and motor functions
  • Attachment
  • Sensorimotor intelligence and early causal schemes
  • Understanding the nature of objects and creating categories
  • Emotional development
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Trust vs Mistrust
  • Feeding
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: mutuality with caregivers
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: Hope
  • An essential belief that one can attain one’s deep and essential wishes
  • Core Pathology: Withdrawal
  • Social and emotional detachment
  • The infant must …
  • Form a first loving, trusting relationship with the caregiver or develop a sense of mistrust
  • Trust the aspects of their world that are beyond their control
  • The infant will develop a sense of trust if its needs for food and and care are met with comforting regularity and responsiveness from caregivers
  • Infants must trust aspects of their world that are beyond their control
• Toddlerhood
  • 2 to 3 years
  • Elaboration of locomotion
  • Language development
  • Fantasy play
  • Self-play
  • Psychosocial Crisis: autonomy vs Shame and Doubt
  • Toilet training
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: imitation
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: will
  • Determination to exercise free choice and self-control
  • Core Pathology: compulsion
  • Repetitive behaviors motivated by impulses or restrictions against the expression of impulse
  • The child’s energies are directed toward the development of physical skills, including walking, grasping, controlling the sphincter
  • The child learns control but may develop shame and doubt if not handled well
  • Beginning of self-control and self-confidence
  • Assume important responsibilities for self-care such as feeding, toileting, and dressing
  • Parents need to be protective but not too overprotective
  • If parents do not reinforce the child’s efforts to master basic motor and cognitive skills, children may begin to feel shame
  • They may learn to doubt their abilities to manage the world on their own terms
  • Children who experience too  much doubt at this stage will lack confidence in their own abilities
• Early School Age
  • 4 to 6 years
  • Gender identification
  • Early moral development
  • Peer play
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative vs Guilt
  • Independence 
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: identification
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: purpose
  • The courage to imagine and pursue valued goals
  • Core Pathology: inhibition
  • A psychological restraint that prevents freedom of thought, expression, and activity
  • The child continues to become more assertive and to take more initiative but may be too forceful, which can lead to guilt feelings
  • The challenge for this period is to maintain a zest for activity and at the same time understand that not every impulse can be acted on
  • Adults need to provide supervision without interference
  • If children are not allowed to do things on their own, a sense of guilt may develop, they may come to believe that what they want to do is always wrong

Elementary Years

• Middle Childhood
  • 6 to 12 years
  • Friendship
  • Concrete operations
  • Skill learning
  • Self-evaluation
  • Team play
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Industry vs Inferiority
  • School
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis:  education
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: competence
  • The free exercise of skill and intelligence in the completion of tasks
  • Core Pathology: inertia
  • A paralysis of action and thought that prevents productive work
  • Students are beginning to see the relationship between perseverance and the pleasure of a job completed
  • Children’s ability to move between the worlds of home and neighborhood, and school, and to cope with academics, group activities, and friends will lead to a growing sense of competence
  • Difficulty with these challenges can result in feelings of inferiority
  • Have you decided on a career? What alternatives did you consider? Who or what was influential in shaping your decision?

Adolescence

• Early Adolescence
  • 12 to 18 years
  • Physical maturation
  • Formal operations
  • Emotional development
  • Membership in the peer group
  • Romantic and sexual relationships
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Group Identity vs Alienation
  • Peer relationships
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: peer pressure
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: fidelity to others
  • The ability to freely pledge and sustain loyalty to others
  • Core Pathology: dissociation
  • An inability to connect with others
  • Young adolescents must confront the central issue of constructing an identity that will provide a firm bias for adulthood
  • Answer the question, “Who am I?”
  • Identity: organization of an individual’s drives, abilities, beliefs, and history
  • Involves deliberate choices and decisions, particularly about work, values, ideology, and commitments to people and ideas
  • Identity Statuses
  • Identity Diffusion
    • Do not explore options and made commitments
    • These individuals reach no conclusions about who they are or what they want to do with their lives
    • Apathetic, withdrawn, with little hope for the future, or they may be openly rebellious
  • Identity Foreclosure
    • Commitment without exploration
    • Foreclosed adolescents have not experimented with different identities or explored a range of options, but simply have committed themselves to the goals, values, and lifestyles of others (usually their parents)
    • Foreclosed adolescents tend to be rigid, intolerant, dogmatic, and defensive
  • Moratorium
    • Expiration with a delay in commitment to personal and occupational choices
    • Common and healthy for modern adolescents
    • The period is no longer referred to as a crisis because, for most, the experience is a gradual exploration rather than a traumatic upheaval
  • Identity Achievement
    • Strong sense of commitment to life choices after free consideration of alternatives
    • Few students achieve this status by the end of high school
    • Students who attend college may take a bit longer to decide
    • It is not uncommon for the explorations moratorium to continue until the early 20s
    • Some adults may achieve a firm identity at one period in their lives, only to reject that identity and achieve a new one later
    • Moratorium and identity achieved statuses
  • Adolescent Egocentrism
  • Adolescents become very focused on their own ideas
  • Everyone else shares one’s thoughts, feelings, and concerns
  • Imaginary Audience
  • The feeling that everyone is watching
  • Adolescents believe that others are analyzing them

ADOLESCENT EGOCENTRISM >> IMAGINARY AUDIENCE

• Personal Fable
  • Self-generated, often romanticized story of one’s own personal identity
  • So unique that you’re misunderstood by others
• Later Adolescence
  • 18 to 24 years
  • Autonomy from parents
  • Gender identity
  • Internalized morality
  • Career choice
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Individual Identity vs Identity Confusion
  • Peer relationships
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: role experimentation
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: fidelity to values
  • The ability to freely pledge and sustain loyalty to values and ideology
  • Core Pathology: repudiation
  • Rejection of roles and values that are viewed as alien to oneself

Beyond School Years

• Early Adulthood
  • 24 to 34 years
  • Exploring intimate relationships
  • Childbearing
  • Work
  • Lifestyle
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs Isolation
  • Love relationships
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: Mutuality among peers
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: Love
  • A capacity for mutuality that transcends childhood dependency
  • Core Pathology: Exclusivity
  • An enlist shutting out of others
  • Intimacy refers to a willingness to relate to a person on a deep level, to have a relationship based on more than mutual need
  • Someone who has not achieved a sufficiently strong sense of identity tends to fear being overwhelmed or swallowed up by another person and may retreat into isolation
• Middle Adulthood
  • 34 to 60 years
  • Managing a career
  • Nurturing intimate relationships
  • Expanding caring relationships
  • Managing the household
  • Psychosocial Crisis:  Generativity vs Stagnation
  • Parenting or mentoring
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: Person-environment fit and creativity
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: care
  • A commitment to concern about what has been generated
  • Core Pathology: rejectivity
  • Unwillingness to include certain others or groups of others in one’s generative concern
  • Generativity extends the ability to care for another person and involves care and guidance for the next and future generations
  • A person’s concern and energies must broaden to include the welfare of others and society as a whole
  • Stagnation happens when an individual is concerned with one’s own needs and comforts
  • Life loses meaning and the person feels better, dreary, and trapped
• Later Adulthood
  • 60 to 75 years
  • Accepting one’s life
  • Redirecting energy toward new roles and activities
  • Promoting intellectual vigor
  • Developing a point of view about death
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Integrity vs Despair
  • Reflection on and acceptance of one’s life
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis: introspection
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: wisdom
  • A detached yet achieve concern with life itself in the face of death
  • Core Pathology: disdain
  • A feeling of scorn for the weakness and frailty of others
  • Coming to terms with death
  • Achieving integrity means consolidating your sense of self and fully accepting its unique and unalterable history
  • People who have lived richly and responsibly develop a sense of integrity
  • If previous life events are viewed with regret, the elderly person experiences despair (heartache and remorse)
• Very Old Age
  • 75 years until death
  • Coping with physical changes of aging
  • Developing a psycho-historical perspective
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Immortality vs Extinction
  • Central Process for Resolving Crisis:  social support
  • Virtue Developed if Crisis is Resolved: confidence
  • A conscious trust in oneself and assurance about the meaningfulness of life
  • Core Pathology: diffedence
  • An inability to act because of overwhelming self-doubt

Strengths

• The theory provides a broad, integrative framework within which to study the lifespan
• The theory provides insight into the directions of healthy development across the lifespan
• Many of the basic ideas of the theory have been operationalized using traditional and novel approaches to assessment
• Longitudinal studies support the general direction of development hypothesized by the theory
• The concept of psychosocial crisis identifies predictable tensions between socialization and maturation

Weaknesses

• Explanations for the mechanisms of crisis resolution and process of moving from one stage to the next need to be more fully developed
• The idea of a specific number of stages of life and their link to a genetic plan for development is disputed
• The specific ways that culture encourages or inhibits development at each stage of life are not clearly elaborated
• The theory and much of its supporting research have been dominated by a male, Eurocentric perspective that gives too much emphasis to individuality and not enough attention to connection and social relatedness

Moral Development

• The mechanism by which children and adolescents learn the difference between right and wrong

Moral Reasoning

• Their thinking about right and wrong and their active construction of moral judgments

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