Adult Personality Development

Volume 1: Theories and Concepts

Lawrence S. Wrightsman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9781506320069
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gerontology
• Index: Social Sciences

These stimulating companion volumes reflect an expansion of the coverage of Wrightsman's earlier book Personality Development in Adulthood.

They encourage readers to look at the evolving nature of their own lives, and include case studies throughout to illustrate concepts in a thought-provoking, non-technical manner.

1

Conceptions of
Personality Development in Adulthood

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

Plato

Today, terms like midlife crisis, generation gap, and thirtysome-thing frequently appear in the popular press. But for many decades the field of psychology treated the topic of personality development in adulthood with benign neglect. Thirty years ago the assumption held by most psychologists, as well as by society in general, was that once people passed through the traumas of adolescence, completed their formal schooling, entered the world of work, got married, and “settled down,” nothing much new happened to them until the inevitability of their death. But now all of us–psychologists and laypersons alike–recognize that things are not that straightforward, that adulthood is not a prolonged period of predictable sameness and constancy As just one type of example, many middle-aged persons claim extensive personality and behavior changes that in some ways resemble a second adolescence. Adulthood–and especially the nature of personality development during this extended period–has become a topic worthy of scholarly study, as well as popular interest.

The phenomenon of the “midlife crisis” exploded into our consciousness in the middle of the 1970s, concurrently with social scientists reactivating a long dormant interest in adulthood. But even as the publication of Passages by Gail Sheehy in 1976 was leading many adults to contemplate their lives from a fresh perspective, social scientists began to disagree about just which theories and which sets of concepts to apply How do psychologists properly conceptualize the processes by which we move through the several decades of adulthood? Do we simply unfold a scenario formed at an earlier age? Do changes reflect a smooth and seamless transition? Or are wrenching disjunctions and disruptive shifts inevitable? May apparent “changes” really reflect a manifestation of consistencies in the underlying structure of one’s personality?

Three broad theoretical perspectives provide highly contrasting answers to questions like those above. These are, first, an early formation approach that assumes personality structure is established–and then remains essentially unchanged–in the first years of childhood; second, a stage theory of development, as represented in the concepts of Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson, and Roger Gould; and third, a dialectical analysis that poses ongoing irreconcilable tensions between basic needs, meaning that development never ends.

Chapters in Volume 1 elaborate on each of these three approaches. Each theory has its merits. My goal is not so much to conclude which perspective is best, but to describe the approach, while examining the methods used to evaluate each theory and the quality of evidence for each. A second volume, titled Adult Personality Development: Applications, employs concepts and findings from each of the three perspectives to understand a multitude of aspects of adulthood, including occupational and career shifts, sex-role development, marriage and other intimate relationships, sexual behavior, changes in values, and attitudes toward death and dying. The second volume concludes with chapters on the use of personal documents to understand personality development in adulthood. Until recently, the science of psychology has been unduly restricted in the types of methods it has employed to evaluate differing theories of personality development. Throughout these volumes, I seek to demonstrate that the use of personal documents as sources of data can improve the knowledge base for each theory, and, not incidentally, provide each of us with greater understanding of ourselves. By “personal documents” I refer to materials such as autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and collections of letters. Just as the topic of personality development in adults was neglected for many years, so too was the methodology for analyzing personal documents. It is not much of an exaggeration to claim that the “state of the art” regarding the use of personal documents in psychology has not, until recently, advanced beyond that level summarized in Gordon Allport’s (1942) monograph review written about 50 years ago.

The major portion of this initial chapter presents an overview of the three divergent theoretical perspectives, including the basic assumptions underlying each. In selecting those theoretical conceptions that provide the structure of our analysis, my focus is on the global nature of personality, as defined in a classic Allportian sense (Allport, 1937). This personality paradigm, as described by Craik (1976), uses the person as the basic unit of analysis, seeks to understand the organization of the individual’s behavior, and investigates the relationship of the individual’s personality characteristics to his or her behavior and outcomes.

Early Formation Theories

It has been a staple of folklore for a long time that “as the twig is bent the tree is formed,” that experiences during childhood structure one’s orientation to life as an adult. An extreme reflection of this view proposes that you now are what you were, only bigger and more; whatever occurs later is just an elaboration or refinement of an early orientation. Psychological theories have contributed–sometimes intentionally, sometimes not–to this notion. In this section several approaches relevant to an assumption of “early formation” are introduced.

Personal Construct Theory

Early formation theories are usually associated with a psychoanalytic explanation of personality development, and that approach will be described in the next section. But Sigmund Freud and his followers are not the only ones whose contributions provide support for a view that adult personality is structured at an early age. Cognitive analyses of personality development also may emphasize early developmental processes.

Our behavior is influenced by our perceptions. We react to what we think we see or hear, not just what is actually there. Given the same stimulus–the same painting, the same song–each of us is likely to perceive it as somewhat different. In personal construct theory, interpretation thus results from cognitive determinants (in contrast to psychoanalytic theory, which emphasizes motivations).

Interpretation is inevitable, so this theory says, because the world is too complex to be perceived straightforwardly. There is too much going on to process everything; we can notice this but not that. We also have to make decisions rapidly on occasion, forcing us not only to perceive but to interpret. When a stranger knocks on our door, requesting to use our telephone, our response is influenced by his appearance, his demeanor, and our judgment of his credibility As we drive along the freeway we notice drivers and cars that are behaving abnormally, and we anticipate the need to react to them if they lose control.

George Kelly (1955) developed personal construct theory as an effort to systematize these assumptions. As we attempt to superimpose some order on the complex world, we develop constructs, or organizing labels, that help us distinguish between and classify events (Jankowicz, 1987).

How does a construct develop? First, we notice general features or similarities in stimuli–whether in people, in events, in sounds, in tastes, in any broad type of stimulus. We note those that are alike; those that are different. A young child may grow up in a family that has both a dog and a cat. At first, the child views these as being alike, that is, in the same construct, and they are distinguished from other objects that the child is struggling to fit into other constructs. But later the child learns that separate constructs, “dogs” and “cats,” are appropriate for distinguishing between and labeling these two objects. As children grow older they develop more specific constructs to deal with the different breeds of dogs, all the while maintaining and using their earlier, broad constructs, when appropriate.

This approach reflects, in a broad way, current thinking about cognitive development in young children (i.e., Keil, 1989; Markman, 1989; Stern, 1990). For example, even 3-year-old children use a kind of causal-explanatory framework–Wellman (1990) calls it a “belief-desire” theory of mind–in order to explain and predict the world. Flavell (1991) concludes that current research indicates that 3-year-olds can predict people’s future actions and explain their past actions on the basis of relevant information about their beliefs and desires.

Kelly proposed that our assessment of individual people is based on the distinctive collection of constructs each of us has in our repertoire. Although we all apply order to the mass of individual differences–the variations in looks, age, gender, personality, interests, and so on–by applying constructs, each of us has developed a unique set of constructs. Each of us, in viewing the same behavior by another individual, may use radically different constructs to describe it; consider three people watching a brief film of a man in a parking lot who goes back twice to check that his car doors are locked. One viewer may call the person “suspicious,” another may call him “overly careful,” whereas a third may call him “absent-minded.”

Central to Kelly’s conception of human nature is the proposal that each of us is like a scientist, constantly developing, testing, and revising our constructs as we seek to predict and understand (and sometimes control) the behavior of important people in our lives. Kelly developed an instrument to identify the constructs each of us uses; the Role Construct Repertory Test (or “REP Test”) is different from traditional personality inventories because the subjects, rather than the test constructor, generate the test’s basic dimensions. As exemplified in Box 1.1, one person may use a great many constructs in describing the essential qualities of those around him; another may “explain” human behavior by using only a few constructs. Kelly (1963, p. 57) noted that a person might classify all people as either “good” or “bad,” for example, but this broad construct might subsume a number of qualities (such as “intelligent-vs.-stupid”) that other people might use as separate constructs. An example of the constructs used by one person is reproduced in Box 1.2.

---

BOX 1.1

Rep Test Part A: Role of Title List

Instructions

Write the name of the persons indicated in the blanks provided below. Do not repeat names. If any role title appears to call for a duplicate name, substitute the name of another person whom the second role title suggests to you.

1. Your mother or the person who has played the part of mother in your life.	1. _____________
2. Your father or the person who has played the part of father in your life.	2. _____________
3. Your brother nearest your age. If you have no brother, the person who is most like one.	3. _____________
4. Your sister nearest your age. If you have no sister, the person who is most like one.	4. _____________
5. A teacher you liked or the teacher of a subject you liked.	5. _____________
6. A teacher you disliked or the teacher of a subject you disliked.	6. _____________
7. Your closes...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Conceptions of Personality Development in Adulthood
• 2. Psychoanalysis as an Early Formation Theory
• 3. Theorists’ Lives: Do They Determine Their Theories?
• 4. Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
• 5. Psychobiography and Personality Development in Adulthood
• 6. Contemporary Stage Theories: Havighurst and Gould
• 7. Contemporary Stage Theories: Daniel Levinson
• 8. The Dialectical Approach
• 9. Consistency Versus Change in Personality Development
• 10. An Attempt at Integration
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author