Adult Development (Lecture 1) PDF

TEXTBOOK READING Developmental psychology is the field of study that deals with the behaviour, thoughts, and emotions of individuals as they go through various parts of the lifespan. It includes child development, adolescent development, and adult development— changes that take place within individ...

TEXTBOOK READING Developmental psychology is the field of study that deals with the behaviour, thoughts, and emotions of individuals as they go through various parts of the lifespan. It includes child development, adolescent development, and adult development— changes that take place within individuals as they progress from emerging adulthood to the end of life. DIFFERENCES AND COMMONALITIES Every journey has individual differences, aspects that are unique to the individual. For example, someone experiencing their parents divorcing or living alone. You experience such things individually. But there are also some commonalities, typical aspects of adult life that most of us can relate to (either now or in the future). STABILITY AND CHANGE Stability refers to the important pasts of ourselves that make up a consistent core. It is the constant set of personality traits, preferences, and typical ways of behaving that make each of us the individuals that we are throughout our lifetimes. In other words, your 40-year old self will be similar to your 20-year-old self in some ways. Maybe you might still enjoy reading books as you did when you were younger or you might still enjoy playing the piano as you did when you were younger. Change is the opposite force to stability. It is what happens to us over time that makes us different from our younger (and older) selves. ADULTHOOD AS A TOPIC OF STUDY Benefits of studying adult development: o it helps people retain functioning for longer. o It can help them cope with the changes (what is normal and not normal). o It also has a social impact (it helps social systems respond better the the needs of individuals). o It provides information on how an agent population provides help to the social environment. o It helps dispel a lot of the myths around aging CHARACTERISTICS OF DEVELOPMENT  Stability and change: there are things that have stayed the same and things that have changed in you. Like how you gather knowledge. Continuity and stages: when we look at adults, we see a gradual change (like your cooking skills are gradually changing). But sometimes, there are such dramatic changes. Like in stages. For example, how you’ve changed from high school to university External and internal changes: some of the changes are visible like, loss of weight, grey hair. And some changes are internal like, increased confidence, fear or anxiety. These are not observable, but the person knows this SOURCES OF CHANGE Normative age-graded influences: you get wrinkles. Your hair turns grey. You expect these things to happen. It is expected or normative in Canada to have children. These are things we can expect as we get older. They can be biological or social o Impacts of age and culture Normative history-graded influences: it is more typical to have children later on at 30 in your culture for example or at 20 in another culture for example. So, it is based on your culture o Impacts of culture and cohorts: epidemics, covid, climate changes. These are things that are happening that affect people and affect them differently. Some of these changes may affect of for a while (talking about cohort). Non-normative influences: we know they are going to happen, but we don’t expect them to happen. For example, being diagnosed with cancer at 20. We know it can happen, but we just don’t expect them to happen at a particular time. They can also be normative. o Time or non-time related Genetics, environment, and interactions: we have certain genes that affect our personality. This also talks about how our environment impacts certain predispositions. For example, you have anxiety but can control it then when you’re in an anxious environment. o Epigenetics: they affect how are genes are manifested. It doesn’t affect our DNA. When they is a modification in our genes, there is a reduction in negative or positive things. This is another way our environment influences our genetics o DNA me DEFINITIONS OF AGE Chronological age: aging in years Biological age: the aging of your various physical systems like, your lungs or bones. It can be affected by lifestyle  Social age: the roles that people take on. Psychological age: the ability to adapt. For example, what life throws at you, you can take it on as opposed to someone who can’t Functional age: it takes all the other ages and combines them (except chronological). It tells you how well you are functioning in your environment. For example: competence, performance, functioning o People tend to focus more on functional age rather than their chronological age. They are defining themselves on their chronological age and not based on their functioning GUIDING PERSPECTIVES Lifespan approach o Multidirectional: we can develop a pace at different ages at different points in our life. o Developmental gains and losses: as we grow, we leave things behind and we gain things. Like we can leave some certain habits but also maybe gain knowledge as grow o Plasticity: life is plastic. We can make changes as we grow and not just in childhood o Historical embeddedness: culture has different expectations, different opportunities. It also has historical expectations like political changes. Or the epidemic. How it has affected peoples development changes. Also social interaction and how it affected us o Contextualism: our behaviour is affected by certain systems we live in (not sure) The biological model— bronfenbrenner’s model o Microsystem: like your university, your friends. Your immediate influence o Mesosytem: how does your partner interact with your parents o Ecosystem: systems your don’t interact with directly but have an influence. Like a change in government and government polices that relate to students or jobs o Macro system: our culture. Canadian culture, Winnipeg culture. How does our culture deal with aging. How do we handle aging o Chronosystem: this is a time factor. Like retiring at 70 or 45. It can be opportunities. If you are a young adult today, your opportunities differ from a young adult in the 80s. Has to do with different eras. CURRENT PERSPECTIVES ON ADULTHOOD Demographics o Fertility replacement level and fertility rate  o Canada’s fertility rate is 1.48; 1.66 in the US ▪ There are older adults in Canada than there are ever before and this is due to health care, mortality related to child disease. It is also due to the birth rate o Declining birth rate ▪ In US they have a higher birth rate than Canada but recently, they are decreasing Baby boomers still a large segment of the population o Impact of this generation/ cohort -The largest baby boomer happened in Canada. Some characteristics of baby boomers are: ▪ More educated ▪ Higher level careers ▪ They are more likely to work beyond retirement (they have worked beyond 65) ▪ Tend to have more money than previous generations ▪ Their contribution to the workforce has made an impact ▪ They have lower rates of marriage ▪ They have higher rates of separation and divorce ▪ They are the generation that you use lower rates of children ▪ They are the first generation to challenge to current values and social values which was passed onto their children. -women o More use of birth control o Women given higher levels of education o Religious aspects MYTHS AND STEREOTYPES -the shift that happened with baby boomers Stereotypes about different ages Terror management theory: because we have a negative view of aging, distancing ourselves from aging helps us to manage the fear of our own aging and our own death. o As people grow old, they tend to do things that make them not appear old or not wanting to be called old. This is where anxiety comes in Under accommodation: failing to consider age related changes that affect speaking and listening  o Younger individuals don’t consider the things that come with aging. For example, for a younger person, they can listening to someone without directly looking at them (like doing something else and listening) but that is difficult for an older person. Over accommodation: when a person relies on negative stereotypes to guide their communication o When younger individuals talk to older individuals in a child like way. For example, in a low tone “hi, do you need help today”. o Elderspeak Self-fulfilling prophesy: when thi Negative self-stereotyping: when older people take these self-fulfilling prophesies on themselves, they start to have negative stereotypes about themselves o For example, “i’m actually bad at driving” INTERVENTIONS TO DECREASE AGEISM Education: learning about it. Interaction: actually having conversations with old people - The younger you start education and interaction the better you start understanding these stereotypes DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH Building blocks of developmental research o Age effects: changes due to growing older o Cohort effects: differences due to being born at a certain time, location, generation, group o Time of measurement effects: changes due to events that occurred at the time of data collection DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH DESIGNS Cross-sectional designs: data collection at one time from different age groups o Cohort a: 20-year-olds o Cohort b: 50-year-olds o Cohort c: 80-year-olds -advantage o They are time effect and cheap. They are fast -disadvantage  o They tend to have cohort effects -Longitudinal design: follow the same group of people over time o Person A: 20 year old in 2010 o Person a: 50 years old in 2040 o Person a: 80 years old in 2070 -disadvantage o Attrition: they might die. You need to start with a very large group in case at the end of the study many people leave, so you’ll have enough people still o It is very costly: trying to keep up with people overtime or trying to follow up is very costly o Practice effect: like getting used to the test. For example, you keep asking the same questions to the same person o Time of measurement: like maybe Covid. It changes your perspective of things o From attrition, people that end up staying int the study tend to be more healthy, they tend to be more interesting in your study. They tend to have higher self-esteem. So you’re left with a different set of people that your originally started with which can affect your results Sequential designs: a series of longitudinal studies started at different points in time. The combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal o Cohort a: 2010 (age 20), 2040 (age 50), 2070 (age 80) -disadvantage Very costly Very labour intensive -advantage You get to see the trajectory of cohorts DATA COLLECTION METHODS Interviews: -advantages: o you can get a lot of things by reading body language -disadvantages: o It can get really expensive.  o They don’t collect data on a lot of people o As you get to know someone, people tend to get reluctant in saying things to the interviewer. You might cross a boundary or assume things Self report: -advantages: o it is really fast. People fill out information. o These are really cost effective ways of getting data and analyze them quickly -disadvantages: o People don’t have access to things that happened way back. It is retrospective o If it is anonymous, o Filling questionnaires could be difficult so instead you resort to standard questionnaires which are very cost effective. They are not feasible o It takes a lot of time to answer the questions because there could be up to 70 questions o In online questionnaires, people could make up stuff or lie or misrepresent themselves Naturalistic observation: observing people in their natural environment or in a lab -advantage: You get to see real life events happen -disadvantages o People tend to change their behaviour because they are being watched o The setting could affect their behaviour. ETHICS Consent: you have to make sure that people understand that they don’t have to participate. Vulnerable populations: older people might be a vulnerable population. Some might need you to read it out to them. Some can do that on their own o It is not right to make an assumption that they don’t understand the study because they are old o You would need the permission from the institution (like a hospital) or from both the institution and the person which is why this a is a case by case situation