Development 3: Adolescence

Characteristics of this period include

Adulthood

1. Personality Development

How similar is our personality (does it change?) across the years of adulthood?

Research suggests that there is BOTH stability and changes in personality across the adult years.
When we compare adults to other adults, personality trait scores as measured on tests tend to remain at about the same relative levels (i.e., the same percentiles vis-a-vis other adults of the same age) as we get older.
However, when looking at fundamental traits (the Big 5: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness) there ARE changes that appear across adulthood

Adults tend to remain relatively stable on the trait of extraversion vs. introversion.
Adults tend to become more agreeable and and conscientious as they get older while neuroticism grows less.
There are conflicting findings about openness to experience: some researchers see a steady though small decline wiht age while others see an increase through middle age and a decline in older age.
Changes in personality are more widely seen in the period from roughly age 20 to age 40. For example, levels of conscientiousness tend to grew significantly during a person's 20s.

Intimacy vs. Isolation (early to late 20s): The challenge is to be able to enter into an intimate relationship with another adult. Otherwise, an individual may experience an enduring sense of isolation. In society traditionally this has meant marriage.

Generativity vs. Self-absorption (late 20s-mid-50s): As middle adults, the psychosocial task is to shape the future generation in multiple ways: raising and guiding young children into their own adulthood, contributing to the well-being of the world via one's job (teaching, inventing, producing, nurturing, caring for the sick, etc.). On the other hand, a failure to be generative finds an adult as self-absorbed, selfish, concerned with his/her own needs and desires.

Integrity vs. Despair (after the mid-50s into old age): Older adults, particularly those who have "retired" from the work of their middle age and whose children are now themselves adults, look back and assess what they have achieved in life and how life "fits together." Was life "worth it"? Did I make a contribution? Can I continue to find meaning and satisfaction in my life or do I become bitter, resentful, and feeling like a complete failure?

2. Life Transitions in Adulthood

Careers: whose is more important - the man's or the woman's? Often, men see their careers are more important.

Impact of child's birth is heavier on women. About 10-20% experience postpartum depression. There tends to be a decline in marital satisfaction with the arrival of the new child.

Parents experience greater impact upon children when they are younger, much less so when they are adolescents.

With the increase in women working, the sense of "empty nest" is far less now than previously.

The return of adult children to the home can itself be much more stressful on the parents.

3. Aging

Increased rates of dementia (multiple cognitive problems, esp. memory). Over 75 years, dementia rate is 15-20% and over 85 years is at least 40%.

Primary form of dementia is Alzheimer's disease which begins with memory loss. However, this leads to complete disorientation and, gradually, the inability to take care of self over the course of 7-10 years.

Overall intelligence remains relatively stable (only a slight decline after age 60)

Memory capabilities appear to decrease, especially regarding episodic (autobiographical/event) & working memory [less loss of procedural ("how to") & semantic ("fact") memory].

Cognitive problems are first manifested by decreased speed: longer to learn, solve problems, process information.

HOWEVER, given sufficient time, ability to solve problems does not decrease in absolute terms. Give an older adult enough time and he/she usually can do as well as a younger adult on most intellectual tasks.

Research by Verissimo et al. (2021) notes: "Older adults have been found to outperform younger adults in other domains … [including] ‘wisdom’, theory of mind, emotional regulation, aspects of decision-making abilities, motivation related to one’s job, and certain dimensions of personality such as agreeableness and conscientiousness" (p. 1)

Further: We tested ageing effects on the alerting, orienting and executive (inhibitory) networks posited by Posner and Petersen’s influential theory of attention, in a cross-sectional study of a large sample (N = 702) of participants aged 58–98. Linear and nonlinear analyses revealed that whereas the efficiency of the alerting network decreased with age, orienting and executive inhibitory efficiency increased, at least until the mid-to-late 70s. [Abstract]

-attentional network => decreased vigilance & preparedness to respond to incoming information, but...
-orienting network => increased selection of information from sensory inputs by shifting from previous processing
-executive network => increased inhibition, that is, actually detecting conflict and inhibiting distracting or conflicting information

Identity Achievement	Know what they want to do and have or are taking steps to do it
Identity Foreclosure	Know what they want to do and have for a long time because they are going to do what others like their parents have told them what to do
Identity Moratorium	Don't know right now exactly what they will be doing, but are continuing their education or otherwise doing something temporarily until they can commit themselves to further training and/or action
Identity Diffusion	Don't know what they want or will be doing in the future, don't care that they don't know, and are doing nothing to remedy the absence of any future direction