Identity and Personality Development

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Identity and Personality Development
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Models of Adult Personality

• Stability or Change?
• Organismic
• Stage
• Universal sequence of development
• Individuals show predictable change
• Erikson psychodynamic
• Levinson stages of life
• Life transitions

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• Mechanistic
• Trait
• Focus on attributes, temperament
• Reduce personality to basic elements
• Individual shows stability
• McCrea Costa Big Five personality traits

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• Contextual
• Timing of Events
• Change not age-related
• Depends on circumstances and events in the
  individuals life
• Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems theory

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Stage Models

• Normative personality change
• Common to everyone
• Recognize individual variation, but
• Successive periods
• Marked by crises, transitions, or life
  tasks
• Occur at about the same age for all
• Psychodynamic theories Freud, Jung

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Erikson

• Development through the life span
• Balance positive (syntonic) and negative
  (dystonic) tendencies
• Eight critical stages (crises)
• Successful resolution results in emergence of a
  virtue
• Four stages in adolescence to adulthood
  (identity, intimacy, generativity, integrity)

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• Identity/Identity Confusion (stage 5)
• Adolescence
• develop concept of self (fidelity)
• integrate past with future direction

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• Intimacy vs Isolation (stage 6)
• 20s 30s
• tolerant acceptance of others
• develop cooperative, affiliative relationships
  (love)
• Who are the most important people in your life?

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• Generativity vs. Stagnation (stage 7)
• 40 65
• personal concern about others
• outward focus, mentoring
• productivity, contributing (care)
• What advice would you give?

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• Integrity vs. Despair (stage 8)
• 65
• reflect positive qualities from earlier stages
  (trust, autonomy, industry, identity),
  self-acceptance
• integrate past experience with current realities,
  produce wisdom
• What have been the most significant events of
  your life?

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Criticisms of Stage Theories

• Overemphasis on chronological age
• Masks individual variability
• No clear markers to denote start or finish of a
  stage
• Deviations from norm may mistakenly be seen as
  maladjustment
• Downplay sociohistorical context

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Criticisms

• Meaning of time and age confused
• Multiple meanings of age
• Functional
• Biological
• Psychological
• Social
• Increased desynchrony between time and aspects of
  age over life span
• Chronological age poorer predictor later in life

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• Western orientation
• Distinctions between individualist and
  collectivist ignored
• Validity of final stage
• May not reflect realities of terminal period
• E.g., Joan Eriksons revision

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Trait Theories (mechanistic)

• Consistent differences (not similarities) between
  people
• constellations of attributes
• Patterns of thoughts, feelings, actions that
  define the individual
• Assume little change after age 30

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• Personality traits identified using factor
  analysis
• analyze correlations among attributes (e.g.,
  shyness, openness)
• Identify groups of variables (e.g., responses to
  questions related to shyness) highly correlated
  with one another (seem to go together)
• Look for basic dimensions (factors or source
  traits) along which people differ

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McRae/Costa Five Factor Model

• Five traits help shape life course
• Each trait a continuum
• Uniqueness comes from combination of traits that
  we possess

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• traits
• Neuroticism (calm worrying)
• Extraversion (quiet talkative)
• Openness to experience (routine variety)
• Agreeableness (ruthless softhearted)
• Conscientiousness (negligent conscientious)

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Baltimore Longitudinal Study

• Began in 1958 (ages 17 to 96)
• Testing every 2 years
• Stability on all five dimensions
• Later cross-sectional study
• 10,000 people
• Ages 32-88
• Found
• Stability on neuroticism, extroversion, openness
  across lifespan (including midlife)

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Timing of Events Model

• Contextual
• Time and age have different meanings
  (chronological, biological, psychological, social)

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• Bernice Neugarten
• Major life events determined by social age
  clock
• Learned from culture
• Normative life events
• When to finish education, marry, have children,
  retire

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• Normative
• Depends on social clock
• on time events become non-normative if occur
  off time (too early, too late)
• Examples?

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• Crisis caused by unexpected occurrence, timing of
  life events
• Stress if off-time
• Lose job, slow career start
• Late parenthood, marriage

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• Cultural/historical variation
• Timing of first child (1970 v. 1987)
• Emphasis on individual life course
• Challenge to idea of universal, age-related change

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However

• Rapid social change undermines predictability of
  model
• Late parenthood no longer a stressor
• Predictions specific to socio-historical period
  (with stable norms)

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Development of Self-Concept and Adult Identity

• Erikson psychosocial development
• Focus on 5th stage the identity crisis
• Marcias extension of Eriksons work
• Adult identity
• Damon Hart factors affecting our views of
  ourselves

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Erikson

• Adolescence (stage 5) Identity/Identity
  Confusion
• develop concept of self
• Transition from childhood to adulthood
• integrate past with future direction
• Positive resolution
• Strong sense of self-identity
• Negative resolution
• Weak sense of self

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• Positive likelihood of positive resolution of
  adulthood stages
• Capacity to develop deep and meaningful
  relationships and care for others
• Consideration of future generations, personal
  sense of worth and satisfaction
• Negative
• Isolation, unhappiness, selfishness, stagnancy,
  sense of failure and regret

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James Marcia

• Developing personal identity in adolescence
  involves
• Experiencing crises
• Forming a commitment
• Occupational
• Ideological
• Adolescents experience different degrees of
  crisis and commitment
• Some dont experience an identity crisis at all

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Marcias Four Identity Statuses
Have you engaged in a period of active search for
identity? (crisis)
Yes
No
Do you make commit-ments, e.g., to a career,
mate, values?
Yes
No
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• Limited generalization most research on
  university students
• Need replication with representative samples
• Type model may be unrealistic
• Often two or more statuses operating at once
• Stability of status can change
• Identity change possible (not endpoint)

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Four Aspects of The SelfWilliam Damon Daniel
Hart

• The physical self (our name, body, and material
  possessions) dominates in the first 2- 3 years
• The active self (how we behave and are capable
  of behaving) dominates during early elementary
  school years
• The social self (the relationships we have
  with other people) dominates during early
  adolescence
• The psychological self (our feelings, thought,
  beliefs, and personality characteristics)
  dominates in late adolescence

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Evidence suggesting that getting to know
yourself depends on gauging other peoples
reactions to you

• other peoples expectations of us affect how we
  view ourselves
• e.g., children who believe that respected adults
  take a dim view of their abilities
• are reluctant to sustain effort in difficult
  tasks
• are more anxious about being evaluated
• come to have low expectations of themselves

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• the social role that weve currently adopted
  shapes how we think about ourselves
• social comparisons shape how we view ourselves

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Age and identity

• Subjective age
• Selective Optimization with Compensation (Baltes,
  1990)
• Adaptation
• Maximization of gains
• Minimization of losses
• Select goals, behaviour on compensating for
  functional loss maintain acceptable levels of
  functioning

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Personality - Identity

• Models
• Stage
• Trait
• Timing of events
• Identity formation
• Self concept

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11 DOMAINS OF COMPETENCY THOUGHT TO BE CONSIDERED
IN ADULT EVALUATIONS OF SELF-WORTH (Harter)

• (1) intelligence (7) sociability
• (2) sense of humour (8) intimacy
• (3) job competence (9) nurturance
• (4) morality (10) adequacy as a
  
• (5) athletic ability provider
• (6) physical appearance (11) household
  
  management