PSY 250 Unit 5 (Chapters 10-14, selected portions) -- Young and Middle Adulthood

Revised as of 11/22/06

Theories of development revisited:  A taxonomy

In looking at theories of development from the perspective of the adult years, it's helpful to re-examine what we've learned previously about the nature of so-called stage theories.  Recall from previous material that all stage theories involve three basic underlying assumptions:

1.  Development is discontinuous.  That is, rather than expecting that change occurs at a constant, linear rate, stage theorists expect periods of rapid transformation to be interspersed with "slack" times of seemingly little change (more precisely, integration and consolidation of previous changes).  In other words, the stages are "real":  they can be objectively identified or spotted in the data (if we graph chronological age against some measure of development or maturity).  They are not just a polite verbal fiction or shorthand:  they exist in a more objective sense.  (Modern stage theorists have backed off somewhat on their claims about the "pure" objectivity of the stages, but would still basically agree with the narrative above.)

2.  The stages differ qualitatively.  "Qualitative" change means a difference in type or kind (rather than just a difference in amount, or "quantitative" change).  In other words, there is a radical shift or "quantum leap" in the nature of psychological processes as one moves from one stage to another:  children are not just miniature adults.

3.  There is an invariant developmental sequence.  Regardless of culture, a "pure" stage theorist would say, everyone goes through the same stages in the same order or sequence (though not necessarily at the same rate).

As noted earlier, some developmental psychologists are stage theorists (adopt a discontinuity approach), while others are nonstage theorists (adopt a continuity approach).  This is one key dimension along which theories of adult lifespan development can be meaningfully compared and contrasted.

The other is the distinction between progress (or teleological) models vs. change models.  In progress models, as people develop, they become better, more mature, more advanced, or more developed in some sense, at least if all goes well (there is a goal or endpoint toward which development is tending;  the word "teleological" comes from the Greek telos, "endpoint" or "goal").  In change models, in contrast, development means change;  an older person is different psychologically from a younger person, but not necessarily in any sense that is "better" or more "advanced".  In general, progress models presume some kind of (at least cultural, if not universal or genuinely absolute) yardstick against which human development can be measured;  change models do not.

These two dimensions are independent, so this yields a 2 x 2 or quadrant system within which various models of lifespan development can be classified:

Many of the overarching theoretical models (such as Piaget's and Erikson's models) that we have explored in part during earlier sections of the course are Quadrant II (discontinuity-progress) models.  This is no accident;  these models were the first to be developed in the history of the discipline of developmental psychology and (consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly) influenced those who came after.  However, many contemporary models of adult lifespan development do not fit this mold, and examples can be found in all four quadrants.  We'll use this concept as a "lens" through which to examine (compare/contrast) various theories/models throughout the rest of the semester. 

First, though, let's revisit some "old friends" (Piaget and Erikson) and see what they have to say about cognitive and socioemotional development during the early to middle adult years.

Cognitive development:  Piaget (continued) and others

The formal operations stage

When the limitations of concrete operational thought are overcome, we have "adultlike" thinking.  While Piaget did not differentiate between the thinking of younger adults (or adolescents) and older adults, some of his followers have.  One common distinction involves the contrast between two kinds of intelligence or mental ability, one of which appears to decrease with age, the other of which increases with age, throughout the adult years:

• Fluid intelligence means mental quickness or flexibility:  the ability to respond rapidly and efficiently, or to assimilate new information quickly and easily.  By age 30, measures of fluid intelligence such as response time are already on the decline.
• Crystallized intelligence means mental sophistication or depth:  the ability to see connections between ideas, to put ideas in context, to weigh things in a sound manner... rather like what folk culture calls "wisdom".  Absent neurological damage, there is every evidence that crystallized intelligence continues to grow without limit throughout life.

One problem with this model is that it fails to account for the domain-specific "peaks of intelligence" or specialized knowledge that most adults come to develop.  To quote one author (Bee, 2004), "Most older adults have one or two small areas of great knowledge, whether... in astrophysics or in growing orchids, and these small areas of expertise are the 'quintessential expression of human intellectual capacity' and do not begin to be reflected in standardized" tests of crystallized intelligence.  (Against this view, see Edward de Bono's model of "lateral thinking" and the notion that intellectual specialization is only half of the coin.  In class, we'll discuss the difference between vertical and lateral thinking... the model is a bit too complex for me to feel like typing it all in here.)

More also in lecture about recent advances in thinking about adult cognitive development, focusing largely on research evidence for (or against) the above distinctions.  Among other things, we'll discover that the variable of cognitive density at age 20 is a very good statistical predictor of intellectual flexibility (and perhaps even the risk of such ailments as Alzheimer's disease?) at age 70.  (This means that -- perhaps -- staying mentally active in midlife is a preventative for cognitive decline just as staying physically active can help stave off organic decline.)  Stay tuned.

Socioemotional development (I):  Erikson (continued)

The sixth and seventh stages of Erikson's theory encompass the young and middle adult years.

6.  Intimacy (21-40 yr.)

Developmental crisis:  Can I develop and commit to a sense of shared identity that transcends my own individual selfhood?  (Traditionally and narrowly defined, Erikson had in mind committed romantic or intimate relationship, but more widely, intimacy issues include group belongingness - friendships and social group membership issues as well.)  In other words, is there a "we" that transcends the "me" of my selfhood?

Extreme resolutions:  (1) Insufficient abandonment of selfhood;  even in my closest relationships, our lives only touch on the surface;  two people living in the same house, but sharing psychologically separate lives;  unwillingness to sacrifice personal fulfillment for the sake of the other.  (2) Excessive abandonment of selfhood;  I become a mere part or extension of the other person or of the relationship, or am "swallowed up" by it;  I retain no sense of independent identity or selfhood at all.

Balanced resolution:  The "we" (health of the relationship) takes primacy over the "me" (individual autonomy and personal fulfillment) to an appreciable extent, but yet allowing room for substantial continued investment in individuality and personal goals.  (Note the intrusion of cultural values here:  some cultures are more individualistic, others more communitarian or collective, and depending on culture, the optimal balance point might be seen as being at a different place on the continuum, though all might agree that at least to some extent, both the "we" and the "me" are important.)  Note also that in traditional gender formulations, men are more likely to err in the direction of extreme resolution (1) above, women in the direction of extreme resolution (2), though that's less true in recent decades.

Dependence on previous stage:  If I don't yet have a self, I can't share it.  I can only give away what I already possess.

7.  Generativity (40-65 yr.)

Developmental crisis:  What is my "psychological legacy"?  Have I found a way to give back to the world, to leave the world a better place than when I entered it, to make a difference with my life, to invest what remains of my life in others (such as the following generation)?  (Erikson probably thought narrowly of child-rearing, but of course, people without children can meet generativity needs in a variety of other ways -- teaching, counseling, public service, volunteer work, philanthropy, social outreach, or just being a concerned citizen and a caring person and a good neighbor.)

Extreme resolutions:  (1) Remaining interocentric or self-focused on my own needs, and not rising to the challenge of becoming concerned about others;  (2) Becoming so exterocentric that I forget that I am still a person who has needs, and that I can only pour from a full cup, not an empty one.

Balanced resolution:  Becoming increasingly exterocentric, transcending purely individualistic or ego-based concerns in favor of the common or wider good (investing my life in something higher or transcendent), but not to the point that I forget about my own needs.  I learn to love my neighbor as myself, but not instead of myself.

Dependence on previous stage:  Intimacy is a training ground for generativity, or the kindergarten of generativity:  if I haven't learned how to give back to (and sacrifice for) someone who (ideally) does the same in return for me, how can I move on to giving to and sacrificing to those who won't or can't return the favor?

Socioemotional development (II):  Levinson and Bridges

An influential alternative to Erikson's model is that of Daniel Levinson.  Levinson's model can best be classified as a discontinuity-change theory:  it posits age-benchmarked stages of development (which are probably more culturally determined than those of Erikson, and likely more historically embedded in the Strauss-Howe sense), but does not suggest a teleological view of personality development as such.

Note:  This model has vocational implications also, and could just as easily have been put under the section on vocational development below.

The details of Levinson's model (which outlines 10 developmental stages) need not concern us here.  More to the point is the notion that, every seven years or so, most adults experience a major shift in their so-called life structure.  The life structure can be loosely defined as the "underlying pattern or design of a person's life at a given time".  As such, it has both external (relational or role-based) aspects (where and with whom you live, where and with whom you work, and so on) and internal aspects (how you see or define yourself, what is important or central to you, what your priorities and values are).  Changes in a life structure can be external (leaving a job, ending a relationship) or internal (coming to see, define, or relate to a job or a relationship in a new way while leaving the external circumstances intact).  A person's pattern of changing life structures over time is what makes up his or her life course or life trajectory.

The cyclical or seasonal aspect of how people deal with life structures can be analyzed using concepts derived from the work of William Bridges.  We can postulate a sort of seasonal quatrnity:  building a new life structure (the "spring" season of the cycle), settling into an existing life structure ("summer"), questioning an existing life structure ("autumn"), and leaving an old life structure and launching out into the ambiguity and uncertainty of the "neutral zone" between life structures ("winter").  Can you identify this cycle in your own life course?  If you are 30 or older, you probably can identify more than one such cycle in your life course to date.  Try it.  Note that part of what drives this process is the tension between needs for security, stability, and predictability, on the one hand, and needs for autonomy, freedom, growth, and change, on the other hand.  These needs are in opposition, so human lives tend to experience pendulum swing between them (as one need comes to the forefront, our choices and activities are driven by that need, but we tend to overreact and put ourselves in situations that will satisfy that need but put the other need at risk, pushing us to the other side of the cycle or pendulum swing).

The transition points or turning points in the Levinson model are thus the times in the seasonality of our lives when we are between life structures (when autonomy is maximized but security is minimized).  There is nothing mysterious about the underlying psychological mechanism (though many adults seem surprised when they discover that no life structure lasts forever!), though it's an open question why the cycle seems to beat to a seven-year rhythm for most people.  A seven-year cyclical rhythm leaves room for about 3 seasonal cycles between the years of 30 and 50.  (By that measure, I'm right on schedule.)

Note that this is a nomothetic model by one measure, an idiographic model by another.  It's nomothetic in the sense that most people appear to experience transition points at the same general times in their lives, partly because the clock starts ticking at about the same time for everyone (the start of independent adulthood), partly because of sociocultural pressures and dimly defined rites of passage within the culture.  But it's idiographic in that different people experience markedly different life trajectories (the nature of the transitions -- the kinds of choices people actually make -- differ markedly from one person to another).  Hence Levinson's model suggests that certain points in the adult life cycle are "high risk" times for change and transition, but it doesn't (at least in my view) do such a good job in predicting the precise nature of what those transitions (or their outcomes) will be.

Note, by the way, that developmentalists are divided in the relative emphasis they put on the two causal factors (internal/psychological and external/sociological) that drive the cycles.  Those more influenced by personality psychology tend to the former view;  those more influenced by social psychology tend to the latter view.

In lecture, I'll be providing you with some autobiographical material (not my own life, sorry, but that of an unnamed third party) to see if you can identify some of the aforementioned trends and themes in a real-world case study.

For more on the Bridges model, see here.

Personality stability in the adult years

To understand the material that follows, go back to Unit 1 as needed and make sure that you remember (a) what a longitudinal study is, (b) what the Big Five dimensions of normal personality are.

While there is a high degree of personality stability over the years, on average the following longitudinal trends have typically been found:

• Extraversion, Openness, and Neuroticism tend to decrease with age.
• Agreeableness and Convergence tend to increase with age.

Can you see why these trends make good theoretical sense?  If you are a nontraditional student with enough life experience to comment meaningfully on the question (meaning that you are at least 40), can you see these changes in your own life?  Why or why not?

If these changes are independent of historical context, they may shape our perceptions of what it (at least stereotypically) means to be a "younger" or an "older" person.  However, caution is warranted.  A lengthy hybrid-design study would be required to rule out the possibility that these changes are an artifact of the Strauss-Howe cycle.  Against these general findings stands research indicating that needs for autonomy increase throughout middle adulthood (autonomy needs would likely be associated with O+ and C- on the Big Five).

Models of vocational development

A rather lengthy preamble

As a former professional career counselor, I have to admit that I find most textbook treatments of lifespan career development issues hopelessly out of date.  So, for this section, I'm going to deviate from what the texts say, put on my real-world practitioner's hat, and give you some pragmatic advice.  Then we'll go back and evaluate some of the influential theories in light of how the new world of work really functions.

The world of work has changed more in your lifetime than in the 150 years preceding your birth.  If you try to engage in career planning by yesterday's rules, don't be surprised to discover that you're obsolete before you begin.

Here are a few wake-up statistics for you:

• The average twentysomething entering the job market for the first time this year can expect, on average, 9 to 13 job changes in a working lifetime.  (Put differently:  the average job in America now lasts only 3.6 years.)  Those are projected median figures, which means that 50% of you can expect more job changes than that.
• These figures include something completely unimaginable only a generation ago:  an average of 3 to 5 radical career shifts within a working lifetime.  By "radical career shift" is meant a complete redefinition of your vocational self... from CPA to fighter pilot to neurosurgeon to bungee jumping instructor to U.S. Senator.
• Over 7 of 10 Americans say that they would change jobs tomorrow if wishing could make it so.  Moral:  most people apparently expect a lot more out of work than they're receiving... possibly because lots of us choose careers nearly at random.

Here are some of the ways the world of work has changed since 1981 (a mere quarter-century ago):

• Competition is now global, not local.  Not so long ago, businesses mainly had to compete with the company down the street.  Now they have to compete with the company half a world away.  Guess what this means for your job security?  As one wit put it, "The American dream is alive and well!  It's just been relocated to northern India."
• Customers are exponentially more fickle.  A quarter century ago, advertisers still spoke bravely about "brand loyalty".  Now, people use the power of the Internet (yep, Bill Gates is responsible for a lot of these trends) to shop everything, which means that it's harder and harder to predict the future by extrapolating from the past.
• Job security is dead.  The old work paradigm (which probably reached its peak two generations ago, but which still governed people's thinking as recently as 20 years ago) was, in essence, one of trading loyalty for security.  You'd sell your soul to the company store, receiving in return a job for life and a fat pension.  Now, it's not that unusual for people to arrive for work on their first day to find that they've already been downsized:  "Here's where your office would have been."  The new paradigm is one of trading problem solving ability for enhanced marketability.  More about that later.
• Life balance is harder to find, though it's higher on people's wish lists than ever before.  In a 24/7, instant-turnaround economy, companies can't always afford to let you have a personal life.  Technology has made it impossible to take a real vacation;  many high level executives take their cell phones with them even into the shower.  Burnout and workaholism are rampant.
• A new two-tiered society may be emerging, in which the "haves" are the information workers ("symbolic analysts" in Robert Reich's terminology) and the "have nots" are the routine production and service workers.  This bodes well for the future of higher education (deep sigh of relief), though as Christopher Lasch notes, it has some other unpleasant side effects, such as the fact that the "haves" increasingly inhabit a virtual, synthetic world almost wholly divorced from what used to be called reality.
• Effective work has to be both high-tech and high-touch even though few people are equally skilled at both.  Consider the technological changes that have taken place within, if not your lifetime, then  mine:  50 years ago, slide rules were high tech;  all telephones were corded;  the few computers in existence were the size of a whole room, yet had less computing power than most pocket calculators do today.  (More recently:  15 years ago there were a total of 70 Web sites in the whole world;  today there are well over ten million times that.)  Yet, if mishandled, all these technical marvels can make people feel isolated and dehumanized:  think "voice mail" if you don't get the point.

Career shapes (Jaffe)

As noted above, most "traditional" models are flawed in my view (not in touch with the realities of the new work paradigm).  Even though they acknowledge that people's interests and personality (as in Holland's RIASEC model) influence career choice, and rightly presume that career satisfaction is a function of "person-environment fit", they falsely presume a "one-type-fits-all" career trajectory.  A useful exception is Jaffe's model of four "career shapes" as outlined below.

Career shape #1:  The classic career

The first career shape is called "classic" because everyone who was employed 50 years ago -- in 1953 -- had a career that looked pretty much like this one, or at least aspired to it.  (If Strauss and Howe are right, this is the career shape that predominates during the Spring season of every cultural saeculum;  and, conversely, it is the one that falls most out of favor during every Autumn.)  One might define this career as "climbing the ladder of success";  deciding early on a career, beginning with an entry-level position in that field, and rising predictably and steadily through the ranks (ideally, with a single company) until you finally reached the top of the ladder, where you remained until you were old enough to be retired with a fat pension and a gold watch.   (You would then spend your declining years winding that watch.)

Of course, contemporary (Autumnal) market pressures have put significant stresses on the classic career, as many classic careerists found to their dismay in the late 80's and early 90's when the word "downsizing" first became part of everyday parlance.  Today, the "new classic" version of this career shape still emphasizes linearity, vertical career growth, and upward career mobility, but not necessarily within the same company or the same industry. 

Note that inherent in the classic career is the notion that advancement and promotion means moving increasingly away from specialist roles and into more generalist (managerial) roles.  This is one of the reasons why the classic career never really worked for everyone (although, in the 1950's, everyone had to pay lip service to it, or act as though it did work):  because it is geared more to people who are "hard-wired" in the direction of generalist, versus specialist, roles (it rewards managers more than individual contributors).  As a matter of personal career self-management, it is extremely important for you to decide early on in your career (or belatedly if you have never thought about it before) whether you are more of a specialist or more of a generalist, because this may largely dictate your choice of career shapes.  Specialists focus on (and mostly enjoy) depth -- become expert in a specific content area or branch of knowledge.  Generalists focus on (and mostly enjoy) breadth -- wearing a bunch of different hats.  Which are you?  Of course, whatever the answer, you need to maintain an appropriate balance between the two extremes, lest you become lopsided.  (Readers of Dilbert can easily relate to the stereotypes of the excessive generalist, like the manager who can't tell the difference between a laptop and an Etch-a-Sketch, and the excessive specialist, who is incapable of carrying on a conversation about anything other than asynchronous mode transfer protocols.)

A problem with the classic career is that it implies (and works best within) a traditionally constituted -- that is, pyramidal -- organization.  And, of course, pyramids, by definition, narrow at the top:  at each successive level, there is room for fewer and fewer individuals.  The result?  Most people working within the classic career shape can expect, at some time in their lives (the highest time of risk being in midlife or mid-career) to be plateaued.  Knowing how to deal productively with career plateauing -- so that one can do something more useful than simply "coast until retirement" -- is a mission-critical survival skill for classic careerists in any age.

Career shape #2:  The concentric career

Specialists, from academics to engineers to neurosurgeons to attorneys -- the world's true "knowledge workers" -- never fit in well within the classic career (and, in fact, the best and brightest of them were exempted from its demands even in the 1950's, but not always without a price).  Why?  Because their hard-wired motives run in a direction opposite to that of the traditional general manager, who seeks an increasing scope (breadth) of responsibilities that necessarily involve leaving in-depth technical information behind early in his or her career.  A true specialist type likes nothing better than becoming expert about the 80% of knowledge that few others in his or her organization care about or have the time to be bothered with.  For such a person, being promoted to a managerial position may feel like a death sentence:  first, because it takes him or her away from the specialist roles and knowledge that s/he loves;  second, because it calls on a different set of skills that may be weak suits;  third, because one can never "back down" the organizational pyramid (in companies that buy heavily into the classic career model, anyway) without being seen or labeled as a "failure".  (Thus, in the 1950's, savvy specialists had to find ways to avoid undesirable promotions -- what Laurence J. Peter called, with tongue firmly in cheek, "the strategy of creative incompetence".)

Where the classic career focuses on vertical growth, the concentric career emphasizes lateral growth (becoming better and better at one's area of chosen expertise).  Hence while generalists often compare themselves to others within the same organization, specialists often compare themselves to their "knowledge peers" across organizations and tend to identify much more strongly with their profession than with their employer.  (In a day and age in which organizations can no longer make lifelong promises to employees, this may be more adaptive than maladaptive, but like most other things in life can sometimes be carried too far, in which case the specialist gets labeled as "not a team player".)

A core danger for concentric careerists is that of overspecializing or becoming too narrow -- "learning more and more about less and less until finally you know everything about nothing", at which point, if you are an academic, you are granted tenure.  (That's a joke -- probably mostly gallows humor since I am not tenured myself.  Please don't be like the character Rex Tangle in Dilbert, who argued, "If I were meant to have a sense of humor, the company would have issued me one.")  A person who is overspecialized may lose his or her ability to communicate effectively across departmental lines (with those who do not share his or her domain-specific knowledge), and can easily lose marketability and employability if s/he does not maintain sufficient second-tier, fallback skills.  (The label "overqualified" is usually applied to such people when they are on the job market.  My usual response in job interviews, although not all employers respond favorably, is, "Tell me how stupid you want me to be, and I'll do that.")

Career shape #3:  The concurrent career

The first two career shapes share in common a single, focused goal, whether that goal is to increase in breadth of responsibility and authority (the classic career) or to increase in depth of knowledge and domain-specific expertise (the concentric career).  In contrast, the remaining two career shapes are more divergent (multiple goals) than convergent (a single goal).  That's why, in the traditionalism of Spring (circa 1955), those who pursued them would have been seen as abject failures... but in the explorative, individualistic season of Autumn (circa 1995), people who pursued these paths (like the dot-com millionaires) were seen as cutting-edge successes.  And so it goes... which is why you shouldn't hitch your wagon too strongly to today's star, because tomorrow it may become a supernova.  Sic transit gloria mundi -- and Tuesday, as Rex Stout once said, is often even worse.  (Another joke, which only Latin scholars will appreciate.)

The concurrent careerist is a person who has taken seriously Martin Yate's advice to have three careers going at once:  a core career (that pays the lion's share of the bills today), an entrepreneurial career (which often, though not always, involves literal entrepreneurship in the form of launching a self-contained small business, though it can sometimes mean simply "moonlighting" in a field completely unrelated to the core career;  either way, this not only supplements present income, but provides a fallback position and holds potential for paying the lion's share of the bills tomorrow), and a dream career (often a hobby or avocational passion that may not pay anything at all -- yet -- but which keeps a person's dreams alive, especially if the first two careers provide more in the way of financial than of psychological rewards).  In this person's life, there is not a single center of vocational gravity;  there are three (or more) of them. 

The big danger for concurrent careerists?  Burnout!  After all, keeping three different careers going at once is exhausting, especially if one also has (or wants to have) a personal life.  I am often reminded (older readers, meaning those my age, will be able to relate to this analogy, anyway) of the man, a periodic guest on the Ed Sullivan Show, who would balance spinning dinner plates on top of bamboo poles, and would keep them spinning by running frantically from one to the next.  One pole too many, and all the plates came crashing down at once:  don't let this happen to you if you opt for the concurrent career path.  (How you avoid it is by knowing your limits and by learning how to say no.  Be honest about your limits, please:  denial is not just a river in Egypt.)

Career shape #4:  The crazy quilt career

This last career shape is one that linear, achievement-minded types (die-hard classic careerists, especially) probably look down upon -- but may, in their heart of hearts, secretly envy from time to time.  The crazy quilter is a person who (to a greater or lesser extent, through some combination of desire and necessity) has opted out of the "traditional" career pathways, and has chosen to chart his or her own course, find his or her own road (as the Saab manufacturers tell us all to do), march to the beat of a different drummer (or kazooist or flugelhornist).

What is a crazy quilt career?  It is an "anything goes with anything" work/life:  an ever-changing kaleidoscope of mix-and-match life roles, full- and part-time, conventional and entrepreneurial, "permanent" (to the extent any job can be permanent these days, which in Autumn is never) and explicitly temporary, paying and unpaying.  To this person, work is a part of life, but it can never take center stage in life.  It is a component of the good life, but never more than that;  and a job that interferes too strongly with important nonwork priorities will probably be scrapped, regardless of the effect this may have on one's resume.  

The big danger for crazy quilters is that their chosen life may be largely uninterpretable to others.  They may see an underlying thread of logic (or, more likely, of core values) that run through all their different life choices, but others -- notably, human resource directors and others who are employment gatekeepers -- may not.  Their resumes may offer a fascinating stream of short-term jobs that seem completely unrelated to one another (food server to balloon pilot to alligator wrestler to water ski instructor to tax preparer to steeplejack).  A person who overdoes the crazy quilt approach can seem flighty -- hence, in the extreme, unemployable -- to others.  (Note, Strauss and Howe fans, that this style peaks in popularity during a cultural Summer, when everybody is "doing their own thing, man" and rebellion against "the Establishment" is a badge of honor;  and it is driven almost completely underground, unless required as a matter of economic survivalism, during the harsh years of Winter, when collective security is at stake and there is no time for the culture to tolerate deviants or to treat them kindly.  Aging hippies always become the conformity police in the end:  yesterday the Summer of Love, tomorrow the "Grey Champions.")

Intimate relationships - relational satisfaction, relational style

It should come as no surprise that the child is the father (or mother) of the adult:  styles of communicating, interacting, emoting that are forged in the childhood years set the stage for adult relationship patterns.  At least three of the theories we have discussed earlier in the semester -- family constellation theory (including birth order effects), anaclitic identification theory, and attachment theory -- shape the nature of intimate relationships in adulthood.

Family constellation theory revisited

Classic research by Teman suggests that birth order may significantly interact the choice of intimate (marital) partners in adulthood as well as self-rated satisfaction with intimate adult relationships.  To see what he's saying, we need to first develop a working vocabulary.  Teman studied adult couples who fit certain defined characteristics, for the sake of clarity:

• Each adult was either the oldest or the youngest sibling in her/his family of origin.  Only children and middle children were excluded from the study.  Presumably only children would show patterns similar to those of firstborns, while middle children would show patterns in between those of first and last borns, but Teman did not specifically study this question.
• Each adult had, in her/his family of origin, siblings who were all of one gender:  all brothers or all sisters, but not both.  Those who had both brothers and sisters were excluded from the study, but would probably show patterns in between the two extremes.

Thus (since each adult was either male or female) Teman ended up with eight types of subjects in his study:

• OBB = older brother of brothers (a firstborn male whose siblings were male)
• OBS = older brother of sisters (a firstborn male whose siblings were female)
• OSB = older sister of brothers (a firstborn female whose siblings were male)
• OSS = older sister of sisters (a firstborn female whose siblings were female)
• YBB = younger brother of brothers (a lastborn male whose siblings were male)
• YBS = younger brother of sisters (a lastborn male whose siblings were female)
• YSB = younger sister of brothers (a lastborn female whose siblings were male)
• YSS = younger sister of sisters (a lastborn female whose siblings were female)

Thus, 8 x 8 = 64 distinct couple types were studied (e.g., an OBB married to a YSB, and so forth), but these can be collapsed into six distinct types:

• Couples with opposite birth orders, both of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  OBS married to YSB)
• Couples with opposite birth orders, only one of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  OBB married to YSB)
• Couples with opposite birth orders, neither of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  YBB married to OSS)
• Couples with identical birth orders, both of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  YBS married to YSB)
• Couples with identical birth orders, only one of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  OBS married to OSS)
• Couples with identical birth orders, neither of whom had opposite-sex siblings (example:  YBB married to YSS)

Teman had each subject rate his or her level of satisfaction with the marriage, and averaged the two ratings for each couple to yield a composite index of relationship satisfaction.  Results were as follows:

Persons married to someone of opposite birth order (first with last) indicated higher relationship satisfaction than those married to someone of identical birth order (first with first or last with last).  This is probably due to the fact that, as children, each adult learns a pattern of responding to others (peers) that transfers to adult relationships;  there is a "parent" and a "child" role, and the best marriages have one of each.  (Two "parents" are always vying for control, two "children" neither want to grow up.)  And having experience with opposite-sex siblings probably enhances the likelihood that a person will have learned how to relate productively to members of the opposite sex.  Of course, these are statistical trends only (any marriage can be happy) but are suggestive.

Hence, the happiest marriages overall (in the aggregate) are the OBS-YSB ("traditional" marriage) and the YBS-OSB ("inverted" marriage), though in the latter case the (sometimes necessarily overresponsible or "caretaker") wife may feel frustrated that her YSB husband "never quite grows up".  To an appreciable extent, however, Teman's results (which are cross-sectional only) are confounded with generational cohorts and would likely hold true during historical cycles in which defined and distinct sex roles are at their peak (Civic and Adaptive generations), and would tend to be less true during more egalitarian or androgynous phases of the cycle (Idealist and Reactive generations).  During these latter phases, birth order effects should be less pronounced or even possibly, at the very peak of the cycle, slightly inverted (YBS-YSB marriages are probably the most strictly egalitarian, with no one in charge... and no one wanting to be).

Someone asked me last semester how this research might generalize to same-sex couples.  The short answer is that I don't have a clue (know of nothing pertinent in the literature), but that it would make an interesting thesis topic for some aspiring master's degree candidate.  

Also related to the general question of relational satisfaction may be  Sandra Bem's model of gender role differences, as summarized below.

The old idea of gender roles is to think of masculinity and femininity as opposites.  That is, anything a person does to become more masculine automatically and simultaneously makes that person less feminine, and vice versa.   Masculinity and femininity are seen as opposite poles of a single dimension.  While this is a continuum, not a dichotomy (there can be degrees of masculinity-femininity), one single variable or single dimension is involved.  Some psychological measures (e.g., the MMPI) still make use of this approach, though they usually relabel the variable as something else.

Sandra Bem's revolutionary idea was to suggest that masculinity and femininity, as two desirable traits, are not opposite at all, but independent or orthogonal.  That is, knowing how masculine a person is tells one nothing about how feminine that person is.  To see how this works, one must somewhat redefine masculinity and femininity.  Most of what our culture thinks of as desirable masculine traits involve what Bem calls instrumentality or agency:  the ability to effectively manage the outer, impersonal, goal-oriented world of results and outcomes  (e.g., self-assertion, mastery, achievement orientation).  Most of what our culture thinks of as desirable feminine traits involve what she calls expressivity, communion, or nurturance:  the ability to effectively manage the inner, personal, process-oriented world of feelings and relationships (e.g., empathy, sensitivity, caring).  Her idea is that a person could in fact excel at both;  instead of having a single dimension, we have two, yielding (what else?) a 2 x 2 or quadrant model:

• High M, high F = the androgynous quadrant
• High M, low F = the masculine quadrant
• Low M, high F = the feminine quadrant
• Low M, low F = the undifferentiated quadrant

As with Baumrind's model in an earlier unit, there is obviously a preferred quadrant, the androgynous quadrant, the argument being that a person who has two valuable skill sets (agency and communion) has more behavioral flexibility, and is more likely to function well in a variety of life settings, than someone who has only one skill or the other.  Much of the research based on Bem's model represents an attempt to test that hypothesis, to look for correlations between androgyny and psychological adjustment of various kinds.  While this is by no means a value-free model (if indeed such a thing is even possible -- a different topic for another day), at least this is an empirically testable hypothesis, that has received a reasonable degree of confirmation.

Cross-gender role patterns (men who are more communal than agentic, or women who are more agentic than communal) show the same gender bias that Freud predicted above:

• Androgynous women are more common than androgynous men;
• Masculine women are much more common than feminine men.

Bem offers a sociological, not a psychodynamic, explanation of this fact (rooted in the notion that, in our society, the male role is seen as higher in status).  Interestingly, her model emerged at a time when gender role differentations were being minimized (an Idealist generation);  whether the model would hold true at other times remains to be seen.

Anaclitic identification theory revisited

Communication theorist Gregory Bateson coined the term complementary schismogenesis to refer to a communication situation in which (to quote Deborah Tannen's summary of his theory) "each person's response to the other's behavior provokes more exaggerated forms of the divergent behavior" that triggered the original response.  (Word detectives, can you see where the term comes from?  "Schism" means a split or break, as in the Great Schism of 1054;  "genesis" means beginning, origin, or source.  So, "schismogenesis" means "tiny cracks in a relationship that can grow into an unbridgeable chasm".)  Can you see how this might be explained in terms of, or be seen as growing out of, gender-based differences in anaclitic identification as discussed in the previous unit?  Issues of freedom versus security, or of "stonewalling" versus "flooding", are typical counseling issues that manifest this kind of downward spiral.  Of this, more in lecture. 

Attachment theory revisited

The four attachment patterns (A, B, C, D) forged in the early childhood years appear to have, as indicated earlier, significant longitudinal impacts on adult intimate relationships.  Main and Hesse, among others, have extended the Ainsworth model to indicate three common adult interaction patterns (type D, as expected, gets omitted from consideration):  the autonomous/balanced, dismissing/detached, and preoccupied/enmeshed styles.  There may be some evidence that dismissing and enmeshed types tend to find one another in a sort of asymmetric role complementarity.  This may be another form of complementary schismogenesis (see above).

Theories of meaning

Viktor Frankl and logotherapy

The relevance of Frankl to this course is the fact that all adults inherently seek a transcendent meaning to their lives (note the link to Erikson's idea of generativity).  Frankl contrasts the ideas of meaning and success;  while they are not opposites, neither are they synonyms.  Rather, they are independent or orthogonal, suggesting yet another quadrant system:

Some of the world's most successful people are also the most devoid of meaning (left upper quadrant), while some seeming failures lead lives rich with meaning (right lower quadrant).  Success is external (what others say about you), while meaning is internal (what you say about yourself vis-a-vis your highest values).

To Frankl, the fundamental human characteristic is freedom of will.  Human beings have freedom of will even when all other freedoms are gone, because they can choose what attitude to take toward their other limitations.  Freedom is a reality despite limitations posed by the instincts, inherited dispositional factors, and environmental conditions;  "Man's freedom is not a freedom from conditions, but rather, a freedom to take a stand regarding whatever conditions might confront him."  All human endeavors are a waste of time if the premise of freedom is not accepted:  "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing... to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."  Frankl argued that the opposite (deterministic, reductionistic) point of view is inherently destructive of all we would want to call human:  "The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment or, as the Nazis likes to say, of 'Blood and Soil'."

What is the purpose of freedom of will?  Fundamentally, it is the will to meaning:  the basic striving of human beings is to find and to fulfill meaning and purpose.  People reach out to  encounter meanings to fulfill.  This view is opposed to homeostatic models of human motivation in which people are seen as motivated entirely by the desire to eliminate or reduce tension.  The will to meaning often implies a willingness to endure tension, even to seek out difficulties when they will produce or enhance meaning.  Thus, the core motives are not "pushes" (drives, as with Freud), but "pulls" (freely chosen values and commitments).  The goal, then, is not a tensionless existence, but the right kind of tension:  "Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension... between what one is and what one should become.  What man needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.  Logotherapy... considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts."

Logotherapy does not dictate to clients how to think about the meaning of life, though it offers some suggestions and insights about how meaning is to be found.  "Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life;  everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment.  Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.  Everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it."  (Here Frankl reminds me of Jung's famous phrase, "A person who weeds a garden well has saved the world in that spot.")  Logotherapy does insist that meaning is indispensible and real, that it is something that is more discovered than invented, that it is external to the self, not a part of it or within the self, that it is found through self-transcendence and not self-actualization.  "The more one forgets himself... the more human he is.  Happiness is the side effect of living out of the self-transcendence of existence.  Once one has served a cause or is involved in loving another, happiness occurs by itself."   Three common routes to meaning are (a) loving another person more than one loves oneself, (b) achieving a goal that transcends the self, (c) transcending suffering.

The term logotherapy itself comes from the Greek word logos which means "word", "meaning", or "purpose" (the same Greek word that is used, incidentally, in John 1:1).  Logotherapy addresses itself to the existential problem of meaninglessness (boredom, apathy, a "wasted" life, "squandered" time) and is not afraid to speak, albeit in rather generic terms, about spiritual issues and concerns.  The deepest issues ("What is life all about?  Why am I here?") are not meaningless questions even though the answers elude or transcend rationality;  "logotherapy speaks in the context of ultimate meanings or supra-meaning which surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man;  logos is deeper than logic.  Spiritual issues such as man's aspiration for a meaningful existence... are taken earnestly and seriously instead of... being dealt with in merely instinctual terms".  While Frankl deliberately refused to state whether he was a "religious" person or whether he believed in God, clearly his viewpoint has much more in common with traditional religious understandings than, say, reductive psychoanalysis or classical behaviorism.

In his writings, Frankl contrasted the notions of the nous and the psyche (two Greek words for the mind or self).  To him, psychological needs were deterministic and instinctual, but these were subordinate to noetic or noological needs which were freely chosen and unconstrained.  In plainer English, we might use the words "spirit" and "spiritual" (whether or not viewed in religious terms) to summarize what Frankl meant by the nous:  the aspect of the human being that is genuinely autonomous, not a mere product of what Maslow would call deficit motives.  The nous is what is uniquely human about us, the part of us that can make genuine, unconstrained choices.

Suffering is inherently linked to meaning;  in fact Frankl might argue that one cannot have one without the other.  Suffering is not viewed as a problem as such or as a neurotic symptom, but as part and parcel of the human condition that can lead to growth.  (John 17:33, "in this world you will have tribulation" -- the Greek word, thlipsis, means an unaccountable, inevitable, universal condition.)  It can be a paradoxical route to the achievement of meaning.  Even a life that is not marked by evident suffering has to deal with the transitoriness, and the seeming arbitrariness, of life:  we cannot have all the possibilities, we are forced to make choices, things don't always work out as we plan or wish (though often, with the wisdom of hindsight, better than we could have engineered for ourselves), we must confront our finitude.  This constitutes our "response-ability", for we are forced to find (or concretize) meaning through deciding.  "You are committed:  you must wager" (Pascal).

Models of epistemic development

Belenky et al.

Based on a content analysis of in-depth personal interviews, this model suggests a stagelike model (if not an actual stage theory) about how people's ideas about truth, authority, evidence, and knowledge may change over time.  At its heart, this is a model of epistemology (the philosophic question of "what is knowledge, and how can it be justified or warranted?"), but from a psychological perspective (how do people actually reason?) rather than a philosophic one (how should they ideally reason?)  This is a controversial model and not without its substantive critics;  it's worth understanding, however, whether or not you ultimately end up agreeing with the researchers' presuppositions.  (It's controversial in part because of the researcher's philosophical belief that all knowledge is culturally relative and humanly constructed, meaning that there can be no genuine objectivity in the deepest sense and no true epistemic or ethical absolutes, but to engage that debate would take us so far afield that we'll never return.  One day when I have some spare time, which will be never, I'll post a Web essay on this site that engages that question directly for those who may be interested.)

The model outlines five stages, which they call Silence, Received Knowledge, Subjective Knowledge, Procedural Knowledge, and Constructed Knowledge.  Each stage differs from the others in the way those within it perceive authorities, the self, the learning process, and the nature of knowledge.

Silence

In this stage,

• Authorities are seen as powerful, intimidating figures who demand unthinking obedience.
• The self is seen as passive, reactive, dependent.
• The learning process is seen as irrelevant or impossible ("who am I to think that I could ever learn?"), and as a result, people in this stage may not really try to learn new things at all.
• Knowledge is seen as whatever one is told, or in extreme cases (such as in an abuser-abusee relationship), what one is "expected to know" without being told.

Received Knowledge

In this stage,

• Authorities are seen as knowledgeable, certain, monolithic.  Authorities are virtually infallible, and all speak with one voice.  Unlike in the previous stage, the emphasis is not on authorities' threatening power, but on their overwhelming or intimidating knowledge, expertise, or competence.
• The self is seen as cooperative, capable of reception or absorption, but not original thinking, creation, or idea generation.
• The learning process is seen as a matter of collecting facts, retaining and repeating (returning or "regurgitating") what authorities say.  It mostly involves a process of rote memorization, which may not necessarily be accompanied by any deep understanding.
• Knowledge is seen as dualistic and unambiguous.  There are always right and wrong answers, and the goal is to learn the right ones while avoiding the wrong ones.

Subjective Knowledge

In this stage,

• Authorities are seen as a threat to the emerging autonomy of the self, in that they are "no better than me".
• The self is seen as an "expert on its own experience", and thus "just as good as any so-called expert".
• The learning process is seen as a matter of identifying one's own "private truth", of listening to and trusting the inner voice of the self.
• Knowledge is seen as introspective, intuitive, emic, and unique to each person.  "What's true for me may not be true for you, but it is my truth and no one else has any right to question it."

Procedural Knowledge

In this stage,

• Authorities are seen as benign, whose role is to facilitate the learning ventures of the self by specifying procedures, means, and methods by which the learner can discover and clarify knowledge.  As such, their role has more to do with process ("how to think") than with content ("what to think").
• The self is seen as capable:  able to make use of established systems and methods (such as the scientific method, or canons of literary criticism) to develop and defend one's own conclusions in a systematic, rational manner.
• The learning process is seen as emphasizing methods of the sort outlined above, with an emphasis on critical thinking and conceptual understanding.
• Knowledge is seen as the discovery of general laws and "provable" universals, although the meaning of the word "proof" varies widely from one context to another.  (A scientific theory is not "proven" in the same way that the profundity or transpersonal relevance of a work of great literature is "proven".)

Constructed Knowledge

In this stage,

• Authorities are seen as nonexistent, in the sense that authority is vested in the collective community of learners and scholars of which the self (student/learner) is an active part.
• The self is seen as capable in two senses, not only able to use existing methods to draw conclusions, but in the deeper sense of being able to question (and thus improve upon) existing methods and processes.
• The learning process is seen as one of posing questions, integrating existing knowledge, drawing connections between seemingly disparate ideas, engaging in an ongoing dialogue or dialectical process, working within a personally chosen ("postrelativistic") context or frame of reference.
• Knowledge is seen as the development of working models, defensible frames of thought, and ongoing progress toward better elaborated models or "cognitive maps" of reality, as well as imbedding one's ideas within the give-and-take of the ongoing dialogue of the community of mutual learners.

For a fascinating look at ideological diversity in America, check out this summary of a national study by researchers at Baylor University.  This is a PDF file (so you'll need to download Adobe Acrobat on your computer if you don't already have a copy).  This is an external link that will take you away from this Web site.  It's a BIG file, so if you it takes some time to download, don't worry... there's nothing wrong with your computer, it's just a problem with the speed of light.  We'll be discussing pages 28-36 of this study in lecture. 

Models of role development

Roger Gould and Robert Butler

The Gould-Butler model divides the adult lifespan into four phases.  In each phase, an individual has some cultural myths to overcome if s/he is going to chart a productive and meaningful course throughout life.

Young adulthood (20-35) -- a time of achieving independence or "launching a life"

Here, the myths are:

• that one will never really be independent from one's family of origin
• that one has to do things the same way as one's parents, or that parents' judgments are final

Successfully challenging these myths means "leaving the nest" psychologically as well as physically and financially, launching one's own life.  Failure to challenge them means remaining stuck in childhood roles (a protracted or extended "adult-olescence").

Middle adulthood (35-70) -- a time of utilizing independence or "building and maintaining a life"

Early phase (35-50)

Here, the myths are:

• that significance derives from society and outward "success"

• that there is a clearly charted path through the adult years (that life is simple, controllable, monolithic)

Successfully challenging these myths means accepting life as a "trek through the wilderness" -- breaking new ground rather than following a preset route, and accepting the concomitant responsibility for one's own choices.  Failure to challenge them means a fruitless quest for merely external or conventional approval ("keeping up with the Joneses").

Late phase (50-70)

Here, the myths are:

• that the middle years will last forever, or that old age can be indefinitely postponed

• that there is unlimited time in which to achieve one's psychological legacy

Successfully challenging these myths means accepting, in a concrete way, the reality of the biological clock -- coming to terms with one's own mortality, and moving increasingly toward a life of ego transcendence.  Failure to challenge them means a life increasingly bound by denial and solipsism.

Elderhood (70+) -- a time of relinquishing independence or "reviewing a life"

Here, the myths are:

• that all important social roles are outward and active ("doing" rather than "being")
• that life is no longer worth living when there is no "future" left in this world

Successfully challenging these myths means "growing old gracefully" (or clear-mindedly and responsibly) -- continuing to engage the mystery of existence, but in an age-appropriate manner that cultivates wisdom, integrates past experience, and fully accepts one's finitude and one's place in the universe as an important yet finite being.  Failure to challenge them means existential despair or "opting out" of life prematurely.

Study Guide

1.  Explain the four quadrants, and the two underlying dimensions (continuous-discontinuous and progress-change), by means of which models of adult lifespan development can be classified.

2.  Summarize what Piaget and Erikson have to say about adult development.

3.  Discuss the Levinson/Bridges model, including the notions of life structure, life trajectory, and the "seasons" of life change.  Give some examples.

4.  What do McCrae and Costa have to say about personality stability and personality change during the adult years (as linked to the Big Five)?  Discuss.

5.  Discuss how the old and new work paradigms differ and what implications this has for theories of vocational development in adulthood.  Discuss Jaffe's model of career shapes.

6.  Discuss the views (research and/or theories) of Teman, Bem, and Bateson with respect to intimate relationships in adulthood.

7.  Discuss Frankl's perspective on the human search for meaning.  How do meaning and success differ?  What is the nous?

8.  Summarize Belenky's model of epistemic development.  How do the five stages differ?

9.  Summarize the Butler-Gould model of adult role development, comparing and contrasting the different stages.

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