CNPS 433

Unit 1: Introduction to Adult Development (Sept 4-14)

TEXTBOOK: Chapter 1

1.1 Basic Concepts in Adult Development

-stability: makes up a consistent core, constant set of attributes that remains stable throughout
-change: opposite force to stability, attributes/parts of ourselves that that change
-stages can be continuous (slow & gradual) and then followed by an abrupt change
-> these stages may be typical or atypical
-outer changes: visible to those around us
-inner changes: not as apparent to the casual observer

1.2 Sources of Change

1) normative age-graded influences = influences linked to age, experienced by all adults
-biological clock: natural aging processes (eg. wrinkles, grey hair)
-social clock: timing of marriage, retirement
-ageism: discrimination based on stereotypes of a particular age group
-internal change process: inner changes resulting from the way we respond to pressures
of biological and social clocks

2) normative history-graded influences = experiences that result from historical events

-cultures: social environments in which development takes place
-cohort: group of people who share a common historical experience at the same stage
eg. The Great Depression cohort

3) non-normative life events = influencing aspects that are unique only to certain individuals
-eg. starting a business at 65, sudden death of family/spouse

1.3 Sources of Stability

1) Genetics
-behaviour genetics: contributions genes make to individual behaviour
-use twin studies to search for genetic influences on variations in adult behaviour

2) Environment
-Grant Study of Harvard Men: shows lifelong effect of early family experience
-> men who grew up in warm/trusting homes grow up to be more able and can
express emotions openly

3) Interactionist View
-genetic traits determine how one interacts with the environment
-epigenetic inheritance: genes one receives at conception are modified by subsequent
environmental events throughout life (DNA methylation)
1.4 A Word About Age
-chronological age: number of years that passed since birth
-biological age: measure of how an adult’s physical condition compares with others
eg. he has the memory of a 50 year-old
-psychological age: measure of how an adult’s ability to deal effectively with the environment
compares with others
eg. always late for work because of oversleeping = functioning like a teenager

-social age: expected roles someone takes at a specific point in life

eg. woman who has her first child at 40 is taking on a role that has a social age of 10
years younger
-functional age: how well a person is functioning as an adult compared to others
-> combines biological, psychological, and social age

1.5 Setting the Course

1) Life-span developmental psychology approach
-developmental is lifelong, multidimensional, plastic, contextual and has multiple causes

2) Bioecological model
-says we must consider the developing person within the context of multiple
environments
-development must take place within biological, psychological, and social contexts that
change over time and these influences are in constant interaction
-> eg. mesosystem/microsystem
-we must consider all the interactions to explain factors that influence a person’s life

1.6 Developmental Research

1) Methods:
a) cross-sectional study: based on data gathered at one time from groups of
participants with different ages
b) longitudinal study: follows same group of people over a period of time, take
data at different intervals
-attrition: drawback to longitudinal study because of participant dropout

b) sequential study: series of longitudinal studies begun at different points in

time (combines cross-sectional and longitudinal study)
-> following several differently aged cohorts over time

2) Measures:
a) personal interview: experimenter asks participant questions
-> can be structured, open-ended, or both
b) survey questionnaire: paper-pencil questionnaire that participant fills out
c) standardized tests: measures some trait or behaviour
 -validity: measuring what it claims to measure
-reliability: measures it consistently

3) Analyses
a) comparison of means: determine whether the differences in means are large
enough to be significant
b) correlational analysis: tells us whether there has been stability or change
within individuals
-> tells the extent to which 2 sets of scores on the same people tend to
vary together
c) meta-analysis: combines data from a large number of studies that deal with
the same research question

4) Designs
a) experimental design: has a control group, random assignment
-> pre-experiments, true experiments, quasi-experiments
b) descriptive research: tells the current state of the participant on some
measure of interest
eg. the number of people of different ages who die from suicide each year
c) qualitative research: research without the numbers
eg. case studies, interviews, participant observations
d) quantitative research: uses numbers and statistics

Chapter 5

5.1 Social Roles and Transitions

-social roles: expected behaviours and attitudes that come with one’s position in society
-biological clock: patters and change in health and physical functioning
-social clock: patterns of change in social roles

5.2 Gender Roles and Gender Stereotypes

-gender roles: describes what men and women do in a given culture in a given historical era
-gender stereotypes: set of shared beliefs/generalizations about what men and women in a
society have in common
-> how they “should” behave
-instrumental qualities: male stereotypes
eg. competitive, adventurous, physical strength
-communal qualities: female stereotype
eg. sympathetic, nurturing, intuitive
-learning-schema theory: states that children are taught to view the world and themselves
through gender-polarized lenses that make artificial or exaggerated distinctions about what is
masculine/feminine
-> they will direct their own behaviour to fit these distinctions as adults
-social role theory: states that gender roles are the result of young children observing the
division of labor -> they then learn what society expects of each gender
-proximal cause: factors that are present in the immediate environment
-distal causes: factors that were present in the past
-evolutionary psychology: traces the origins of gender roles to our primate ancestors
-> explains that females/males are genetically predisposed to behave differently
-biosocial perspective: says that a bias for masculine/feminine roles evolved over the course of
human evolution because of both biological differences (distal) interacting with current
social/cultural influences (proximal)

5.3 Social Roles in Young Adulthood

-transition to adulthood: process when young people move into their adult roles
-> varies enormously among every individual
eg. some go to college, some start work
-emerging adulthood: time between age 18 and 25
-> when young people try out different experiences and gradually make their way to
commitments in love and work
-> 5 differences emerging adulthood has from adolescence/adulthood:
1) age of identity explorations
2) age of instability
3) the self-focused age
4) age of feeling in-between
5) age of possibilities
-cohabitation: living together without marriage
-> drastically increased in the US
-> reason why people are marrying at later ages
-egalitarian roles: equal roles between spouses
-> have more egalitarian roles at the beginning of the marriage before children are born
-marital selection effect: people who have poor mental/physical health are less likely to marry
-marital resources effect: being married gives more advantages -> financial resources, social
support, healthier lifestyles
-marital crisis effect: married people are healthier because the have not endured the crisis of
being divorced or widowed
-parental imperative: genetically programmed tendency for new parents to become more
traditional in their gender roles
-parental investment theory: women and men evolved different gender roles behaviours and
interests because they differ in how much time/resources they invest in each child
-> women invest more because of more time invested (eg. pregnancy, hands-on care)
-economic exchange theory: men and women function as a couple to exchange goods and
services

5.4 Social Roles in Middle Adulthood

-crossover of gender roles: occurs at midlife
 -> women take on more traditional masculine role responsibilities (eg. assertive) and
men become more passive
-expansion of gender roles: also occurs at midlife
-> cause men and women to broaden their gender roles to include more attributes of
the opposite gender
-> include more gender roles rather than crossing-over or merging
-grandfamilies: grandparents taking grandchildren into their homes and assuming parental
responsibility for them
-> usually when parents are unable to take care of child
-caregiver burden: decline in mental and physical health in caregivers

5.5 Social Roles in Late Adulthood

5.6 Social Roles in Atypical Families

5.7 The Effect of Variations in Timing

Chapter 8

8.1 Personality Structures

-personality: enduring set of characteristics that define our individuality and affects our
interactions with the environment/other people
-personality traits: stable patterns of thought, feelings, and behaviour
-personality states: short-term characteristics of a person
eg. being in a withdrawn state temporarily after being mad
-personality factors: groups of traits that occur together in individuals
eg. people who score high in modesty also score high in compliance
-> probably that both tests something similar
-Five Factor Model (FFM): agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness,
extraversion
-differential continuity: stability of individuals rank order within a group over time
eg. do the most extraverted participants at T1 remain among the most extraverted
participants at T2?
-mean-level change: change in a group’s average scores over time
eg. college class tested on some personality measure in first year and senior year ->
would the average change?
-> changes are attributed to maturation or cultural processes shared by a population (eg.
normative change of completing school, starting a career, leaving home)
-intra-individual variability: whether personality traits of an individual remain stable or change
over the years
8.2 Explanations of Continuity and Change
-person-environment transactions: when genes and environmental factors combine to
maintain personality traits over the years
-> can be conscious or unconscious
1) reactive transactions: happens when we react to/interpret an experience in a way
that is consistent with our own personality
eg. friend calls you 2 days after your birthday -> you interpret that you’re not
important enough or that you were important and your friend waited 2 days until there was
time for a long talk

2) evocative transactions: we behave in a way that elicits reactions from others that
confirm our own personality or self-concept
eg. people who have low self-esteem reject compliments -> end up feeling more
convinced that they are not valued by others

3) proactive transactions: when we select roles and environments that best fit our
personalities
eg. if not extraverted, we won’t get a job that requires working with people
-> will feel happier and help maintain introverted traits

4) manipulative transactions: strategies we use to change our current environments by

causing change in people around us
eg. extraverted manager who transfers into a quiet office and tries to motivate
coworkers to be more outgoing
-> trying to reinforce his own personality traits k

8.3 Theories of Personality Development

-identity: developing a set of personal values and goals
-intimacy: ability to fuse your identity with someone else’s without fear that you’re going to lose
something yourself
-generativity: concerned with establishing and guiding the next generation
-> eg. procreation, productivity, creativity
-ego integrity: achieved when people look back at their lives and decide whether they find
meaning and integration in their life or meaningless and unproductivity
-> If they have resolved all conflicts, they will live a well-lived life

EGO DEVELOPMENT
1) impulsive stage:
-realize that they are separate entities from those around them
-small children don’t have control over their impulses, narrow emotional range
-egocentric, dependent in their interactions with others

2) self-protective stage:
-child becomes aware their impulses and gains control over them
 -preoccupation with taking advantage of others and others taking advantage of them

3) conformist stage:
-identify themselves with their reference group (eg. family, peer group)
-concerned with rules, cooperation, loyalty
-preoccupation with appearance and outward behaviour
-they think in terms of stereotypes and limited emotionally to standard clichés (happy,
mad, sad…etc)

4) self-aware stage:
-realize that there are allowable exceptions to simple rules the conformists live by
-feel lonely or self-conscious when they don’t live up to the group’s standards

5) conscientious stage:
-people have formed their own ideals and standards instead of just seeking approval
from the group
-use rich and varied words to describe heir thoughts/emotions
-have long-term goals, intense interpersonal relationships
-can occur past adolescence and continue far into adulthood

6) individualistic stage:
-when people take a broad view of life as a whole
-thinking in terms of psychological causes and consider their own developmental
processes
-mutual interpersonal relationships, preoccupied with a sense of individuality

7) autonomous stage:
-see that life is complex and there are no simple answers (the world isn’t just good or bad)
-lessening of the burden taken during conscientious stage and respect for autonomy of
others
-ability to see own life in wider social concerns

-defense mechanism: unconscious strategies used for dealing with anxiety

VALLIANT’s Defense mechanisms (6)

1) high adaptive level
-defense mechanism: altruism
eg. dealing with stress over health by participating in a race to raise funds for
researching disease

2) mental inhibition level

-defense mechanism: repression
eg. dealing with stress over childlessness by removing thoughts from conscious
awareness (forcefully forget)
 3) minor image distorting level
-defense mechanism: omnipotence (thinking they have unlimited power)
eg. dealing with stress over military assignment by glorifying one’s special
training and high-tech equipment

4) disavowal level
-defense mechanism: denial
eg. dealing with marital problem by refusing to acknowledge a hurtful incident

5) major image distorting level

-defense mechanism: autistic fantasy
eg. dealing with stress over potential layoff by daydreaming about ideal job
instead of trying to actually find one

6) action level
-defense mechanism: help-rejecting complaining
eg. dealing with stress over money problems b complaining but rejecting help/advice

-gender crossover: relaxation of gender roles at midlife

-> aging does not represent a loss, but rather a gain in personal freedom/new roles

MASLOW:
-divided development of motives/needs into 2 main groups:
1) deficiency motives: drive to correct imbalance, maintain physical/emotional
homeostasis
2) being motives: distinctly human
-> desire to understand and give love to others

-self-actualization: highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

-> only level that is a being motive
-peak experiences: feelings of perfection and momentary separation from the self when one
feels in unity with the universe
-positive psychology: shift in research on positive outcomes instead of negative outcomes
eg. well-being, optimism, spiritual growth instead of mental illness and crime
-self-determination theory: explanation of personality based on individuals’ evolved inner
resources for growth and integration
-eudaimonia: sense of integrity and well-being
-hedonia: happiness that involves the presence of positive feelings and absence of
negative feelings
-competence: feeling of effectiveness as one interacts with the environment
-autonomy: need to feel that our actions are being done by our own will
-relatedness: feeling connected to and cared about with significant others in one’s life