Self-esteem Pt. 2 PDF

Preview

Summary

Developmental Psychology...

Description

11/8/19 ■ An important aspect of identity development is forging an ethnic identity ● Sense of personal identification with an ethnic group and its values and cultural traditions ● Begins in infancy ● Adolescents process through the same identity statuses as they do in forming other identities ○ Positive ethnic identity serves to buffer against racial and ethnic discrimination ■ Influences on identity formation ● Cognitive development ● Personality ● Quality of the relationship with parents ● Opportunities for exploration ● Cultural context ➢ Middle and late adulthood ○ Self-concepts and self-esteem ■ Self-esteem rises gradually throughout the adult years until the mid-60s, then drops in late age ■ Sense of clarity about who they are rises through the middle age and declines in old age ■ Gender differences in self-esteem disappear in old age ■ How can older adults maintain positive selfimages? ● Reducing the gap between ideal and real self ● Changing one’s goal and standards of self-evaluation ● Making social comparisons to other older people ● Avoiding negative self-stereotyping ○ Continuity and discontinuity in personality

■ Adults retain rankings on trait dimensions ■ Personality growth from adolescence to middle adulthood highlighted by: ● Greater emotional stability ● Conscientiousness ● Agreeableness ■ Little personality change to later adulthood except decreased activity level ○ Erikson psychosocial growth ■ Research supports Erikson’s view that women and men are capable of psychosocial growth during middle adulthood ■ Early adults confront the psychosocial issue of integrity versus despair ● Try to find a sense of meaning in their lives that will help them face the inevitability of death ■ Elderly adults engage in life review ○ Midlife crisis(?) ■ Erikson and Vailllant: discussed few signs of midlife crisis ■ Levinson believed that there is: ● A transition period from 40 to 45 ● Midlife crisis ● A person questioning their life structure and raises unsettling issues ■ Most researchers agree there is a midlife questioning periods ○ Vocational development and adjustment ■ Average people hold seven full-time jobs between age 18 and 36 ● Job success correlated with Big Five qualities of conscientiousness, extravision, and emotional stability ● Person-environment fit ● Gender ■ Pre-retirement ● Can they support themselves?

■ Actual retirement ● Make choice of when to retire, whether it’s choice or not ■ Often experience a honeymoon phase ● Just after retirement ■ Disenchantment phase ● As the novelty wears off ■ Reorientation phase ● Finally, realistic and satisfying lifestyle ■ What makes for a favorable adjustment? ● Retire voluntarily rather than involuntarily and feel in control of their retirement decision ● Enjoy good physical and mental health ● Have positive personality traits such as agreeableness and emotional stability ● Have the financial resources to live comfortably ● Are married or otherwise have strong social support ○ Personality and successful aging ■ Activity theory ● Aging adults will find their life satisfying if: ○ Maintain their previous lifestyles and activity levels ○ Continue old activities ○ Find substitutes ■ Disengagement theory ● Successful aging involves a withdrawal of aging individual from society that is satisfying to both ■ More support for activity theory than for disengagement theory ● Some seniors become less active ■ Interactionist model of development ● Emphasizes the goodness of fit between

person and environment and their influence on one another...