From the time you were a child, people have posed this question to you. In childhood, you probably answered by indicating some specific career, such as firefighter or teacher. But now that you are an adult, the question takes on new meaning. Rather than simply a matter of picking a profession, the question goes much […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What are the main aspects of McAdams’s life-story model? • What are the main points of Whitbourne’s identity theory? • How does self-concept come to take adult form? What is its development during adulthood? • What are possible selves? Do they show differences during adulthood? • What role does religion play in […]

The theories and research evidence we have con­sidered show that substantive change in adults’ personal concerns definitely occurs as people age. This conclusion is in sharp contrast to the stability observed in dispositional traits but does support McAdams’s (1999) contention that this middle level of personality should show some change. What is also clear, however, […]

Jung’s belief in a midlife crisis, Erikson’s belief that personality development proceeds in stages, and Loevinger’s notion that cognitive and ego develop­ment are mutually interactive laid the foundation for other theorists’ efforts. For many laypeople, the idea that adults go through an orderly sequence of stages that includes both crises and stability reflects their own […]

Loevinger (1976, 1998) saw a need to extend the groundwork laid by Erikson both theoretically and empirically. For her, the ego is the chief organizer: the integrator of our morals, values, goals, and thought processes. Because this integration per­formed by the ego is so complex and is influenced by personal experiences, it is the primary […]

The best-known life-span theorist is Erik Erikson (1982), who called attention to cultural mechanisms involved in personality development. According to him, personality is determined by the interaction between an inner maturational plan and external societal demands. He proposes that the life cycle has eight stages of development, summarized in Table 9.1. Erikson believed the sequence […]

Recently, many researchers have begun analyzing personality in ways that are explicitly contextual, in contrast to work on dispositional traits, which ignores context. This recent work emphasizes the importance of sociocultural influences on devel­opment that shape people’s wants and behaviors (Hooker, 2002). For example, Thorne (Thorne & Klohnen, 1993) showed that when people talk about […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What are personal concerns? • What are the main elements of Jung’s theory? • What are the stages in Erikson’s theory? What types of clarifications and extensions of it have been offered? What research evidence is there to support his stages? • What are the stages in Loevinger’s theory? What evidence is […]

The controversy continues today as to whether personality remains stable across the life span or whether it changes. Given that personality traits have been shown to be important predictors of mental and physical health as well as psychological well-being, potential changes in personality can have important implications for gains and declines in such life outcomes. […]

Despite the impressive collection of research findings for personality stability using the five-factor model, as we can see from the previous discussion there is growing evidence for personality change. Ursula Staudinger and colleagues have a perspective that reconciles these differences (Staudinger & Kunzman, 2005; Staudinger & Kessler, 2008). They suggest that personality takes on two […]