1. Adulthood
Early Adulthood
Late Adulthood
Middle Adulthood

2. Adulthood
Although adulthood begins sometime after a person’s mid-twenties, defining adulthood into stages is more difficult than defining the stages of childhood or adolescence.
For our purposes, we’ll just discuss it more generally – early, middle, and late adulthood
Rick Doyle/ Corbis

3. Early Adulthood

4. Social Development of Adults
Social Clock
Culturally preferred timing of certain events.

5. Think About It
What do you think is the culturally preferred timing of these events?
Getting your first job
Moving out of your parents’ house
Getting married
Having children
Retiring

6. Emerging Adulthood
Emerging adulthood spans ages During this time, young adults may live with their parents and attend college or work. On average, emerging adults marry in their mid-twenties.
Preview Question 12: What is emerging adulthood?

7. Love and Marriage What kind of marriages work?
5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.
Read “Marriage Math” at

8. Marcia’s Identity States
James Marcia expanded on Erikson’s work and divided the identity crisis into four states. These are not stages, but rather processes that adolescents go through. All adolescents will occupy one (or more) or these states, at least temporarily. Because they are not stages, however, people do not progress from one step to the next in a fixed sequence, nor must everyone go through each and every state.

9. The Search for Identity
Erik Erikson (1968)
Key challenge - forming a sense of identity
James Marcia (1988)
4 identity statuses
Identity Diffusion
(no commitment, no crisis) Characterized by absence of commitment and lack of serious consideration of alternatives.
Identity Foreclosure
(commitment without crisis) A person who has not spent time considering alternatives is committed to other people’s plans for his or her life.
Identity Moratorium
(crisis with no commitment yet) A person is currently considering alternatives and seems headed for commitment.
Identity Achievement
(crisis leading to commitment) Characterized by commitment to choices made following a crisis, a period spent in exploring alternatives.
According to Erikson, the key challenge of adolescence is to form a clear sense of identity.
James Marcia asserts that the presence or absence of crisis and commitment during the identity formation stage can combine in various ways to produce four different identity statuses.
Foreclosure is a premature commitment to a role prescribed by one’s parents.
A moratorium involves delaying commitment and engaging in experimentation with different roles.
Identity diffusion is a state of lack of direction and apathy, where a person does not confront the challenge and commit to an ideology.
Identity achievement involves arriving at a sense of self and direction after some consideration of alternative possibilities.

10. Review: Marcia’s Identity States
Diffusion
Foreclosure
Moratorium
Achievement
Individual makes no commitment…
Individual makes definite commitment…
Individual delays commitment…
Individual makes a firm commitment…
And does no “soul searching”…
But commitment is not based on any internal “soul searching”…
And struggles a great deal with internal “soul searching”…
After experiencing meaningful “soul searching”…
Thus, individual wanders:
Thus, individual conforms:
Thus, individual searches:
Thus, individual finds identity:
“I think I’ll do some traveling after graduation…or maybe I’ll get a job…or…”
“I think I’m going to be a plumber because my dad and his dad were plumbers.”
“I don’t know what I want to do, but I don’t want to rush into anything either. I want to find something that’s right for me.”
“It took me a while to find out what I want out of life, but now I think I have a good idea.”
Summary-
Commitment: No
Searching: No
Commitment: Yes
Searching: Yes

11. Fig. 11-24, p. 447 Figure 11.24: Age and identity status.
These data from Meilman (1979) summarize the relationship between age and Marcia’s (1980) identity statuses. The less mature statuses (diffusion and foreclosure) become less common as people move into young adulthood, and the more mature statuses (moratorium and identity achievement) become more common. As you can see, at age 18, relatively few people have reached identity achievement. Source: Adapted from Meilman, P. W. (1979). Cross-sectional age changes in ego identity status during adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 15, 230–231. Copyright © 1979 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Fig , p. 447

12. Think, Pair, Share
Can you think of fictional characters that fit the descriptions of each of Marcia’s identity states?
What identity state do you think you are in? Does the survey you completed last night confirm it?

13. Crisis Commitment Present Absent
Identity Achievement (successful achievement of a sense of identity)
Identity Foreclosure (unquestioning adoption of parental or societal values)
Present
Commitment
Identity Moratorium (active struggling for a sense of identity)
Identity Foreclosure (absence of struggle for identity with no obvious concern about it)
Absent
James Marcia asserts that the presence or absence of crisis and commitment during the identity formation stage can combine in various ways to produce four different identity statuses.
Foreclosure is a premature commitment to a role prescribed by one’s parents.
A moratorium involves delaying commitment and engaging in experimentation with different roles.
Identity diffusion is a state of lack of direction and apathy, where a person does not confront the challenge and commit to an ideology.
Identity achievement involves arriving at a sense of self and direction after some consideration of alternative possibilities.
Prenatal Development
Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood

14. Middle Adulthood

15. Physical Changes
All physical abilities essentially peak by our mid-twenties

16. Physical Milestones Women: Men:
Menopause – the natural ending of a woman’s ability to reproduce.
There are physical symptoms led by a lack of estrogen.
Menopause can have varying psychological effects
Men:
Men do not experience anything like menopause.
They can pretty much produce sperm forever.

17. Social Development
Many differences between the young and old are not simply based on physical and cognitive abilities, but may instead be based on life events associated with family, relationships, and work.

18. Neuroticism scores, 10,000 subjects
Mid-Life Crisis?
Mid-life crises at 40 are less likely to occur than crises triggered by major events (divorce, new marriage).
The evidence suggests that only a minority of people in their 40s struggle with a midlife crisis.
Preview Question 15: What themes and influences mark our social journey from early adulthood to death?
Neuroticism scores, 10,000 subjects
(McCrae & Costa, 1996).

19. Late Adulthood

20. Life Expectancy Life expectancy keeps increasing – now about 75.
Sorry, guys – males are more prone to dying.
Even though there are 126 male embryos for every 100 females, the sex ratio drops down to 105 males for every 100 females at birth
During the first year, male infants’ death rates exceed females‘ by ¼
Women outlive men by 4 years worldwide and by 5 to 6 years in Canada & the U.S.

21. Old Age: Sensory Abilities
After age 70, hearing, distance perception, and the sense of smell diminish, as do muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina. After 80, neural processes slow down, especially for complex tasks.
Michael Newman/ PhotoEdit

22. Old Age: Motor Abilities
At age 70, the brain processes information at slower speeds. Our motor abilities also decline. A 70-year-old is no match for a 20-year-old individual. Fatal accidents also increase around this age.

23. Health
Bad news: as we get older our immune system weakens; thus, we become more susceptible to life threatening ailments (cancer).
Good News: because older people build up a collection of antibodies throughout the years, they get minor cold and flu viruses less often.

24. Cognitive Changes
We tend to remember events from our teens and twenties.
Difference between recognition and recall. Recognition remains stable. Recall declines with old age.

25. A number of cognitive abilities decline with age… but there are different types of intelligence.
Crystallized Intelligence: one’s accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Fluid Intelligence: one’s ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
We gain vocabulary and knowledge but lose recall memory and process more slowly.

26. Aging and Memory
As we age, we remember some things well. These include recent past events and events that happened a decade or two back. However, recalling names becomes increasingly difficult.

27. Alzheimer’s Disease Acetylcholine
A progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, language and physical functioning.
Runs its course in 5 to 20 years.
Deterioration of neurons that produce the neurotransmitter….
Get more information by viewing the interactive brain tour on the Alzheimer’s Association website here:
Acetylcholine

28. Chris Steele-Perkins/ Magnum Photos
Death and Dying
The “normal” range of reactions or grief stages after the death of a loved one varies widely. Grief is more severe if death occurs unexpectedly. People who view their lives with a sense of integrity (in Erikson’s terms) see life as meaningful and worthwhile.
Chris Steele-Perkins/ Magnum Photos

29. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Developed a theory on the five stages of death and dying (DABDA)
Stage 1: Denial
Stage 2: Anger
Stage 3: Bargaining
Stage 4: Depression
Stage 5: Acceptance
Giraffe grief!
Homer Simpson goes through the 5 stages (in record time!)
Read about the teacher’s grieving process in “The 5 Stages of Grading”:

31. Successful Aging

32. Reflections on Two Major Developmental Issues
Continuity and Stages
Researchers who view development as a slow, continuous process are generally those who emphasize experience and learning. Those with a biological perspective, on the other hand, view maturation and development as a series of genetically predisposed steps or stages. These include psychologists like Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson.

33. Developmental Issues Stability and Change
Lifelong development requires both stability and change. Personality gradually stabilizes as people age. However, this does not mean that our traits do not change over a lifetime. Some temperaments are more stable than others.

34. Developmental Psychology
Issue
Details
Nature/Nurture
How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the nurture we receive) influence our behavior?
Continuity/Stages
Is development a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages?
Stability/Change
Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do we become different persons as we age.

35. p. 457a Figure 11.26: Housework trends since the 1960s.
As these data show, the housework gap between husbands and wives has narrowed since the 1960s. Married men have more than doubled their housework, but it is the large reduction in wives’ housework that has really shrunk the housework gap. (Data from Bianchi et al., 2000)
p. 457a