Psychosocial Theories Chapter 9 PDF

Chapter 9 Psychosocial Theories Learning Objectives 9.1 Recognize separation-individuation as a core issue in object relations theories 9.2 Identify the basic elements of attachment 9.3 Summarize Erikson's theory of psychosocial development 9.4 Identify the two main focuses of assessment from t...

Chapter 9 Psychosocial Theories Learning Objectives 9.1 Recognize separation-individuation as a core issue in object relations theories 9.2 Identify the basic elements of attachment 9.3 Summarize Erikson's theory of psychosocial development 9.4 Identify the two main focuses of assessment from the psychosocial viewpoint 9.5 Explain how psychosocial theorists see problems of narcissism and depression as reflecting difficulties in relationships 9.6 Identify the main strength of psychosocial theories as compared to other viewpoints Ever since high school, Christina has had a particular pattern in her love relationships with men. She is close and clingy as the relationship is first being established. Later on, an ambivalent quality emerges. She wants closeness, but at the same time, she does things that drive her lover away: She gets upset with him, gets into arguments over nothing, and isn't satisfied by anything he does to calm her. As he gets more and more irritated by this and their relationship becomes more and more strained, Christina makes her final move: She breaks up. "Why can't I ever find the right kind of man?" she wonders. The psychosocial perspective on personality has its roots partly in the psychoanalytic perspective. Freud attracted many followers, all of whom differed from him in various ways. The group that made the most impact---and evolved into an active part of today's personality psychology---focused on the idea that people's primary tasks in life concern relationships. This perspective started off by examining how infants interact with and are affected by other people. Eventually, it grew to carry that theme onward to the rest of life, viewing adult personality as a reflection of the same forces that are critical in infancy. This chapter describes these ideas. 9.1: Object Relations Theories 9.1 Recognize separation-individuation as a core issue in object relations theories We begin with a group of theories that have diverse origins and terminologies, yet are strikingly similar. They are referred to with the phrase object relations (for overviews, see Klein, 1987; Masling & Bornstein, 1994; St. Clair, 1986). In the phrase object relations, the "object" is a person. Thus, these theories focus on one person's relations to others. The core theme of this view derives from Freud's idea that the ego develops bonds to external objects to release id energies effectively (Eagle, 1984). Object relations theories focus on these bonds, but only for people as objects. In these theories, the point isn't to satisfy the id. Instead, the bond is a basic ego function. It is personality's main focus (Fairbairn, 1954). As in many other neoanalytic theories, the emphasis is on the ego, rather than the id (see Box 9.1). Box 9.1 Ego Psychology Many people who followed Freud came to believe that he didn\'t give enough credit to the ego. As a result, many neoanalytic theories were proposed that focused on the ego and its functions. Although the theories are diverse, they all emphasize development of the ego for its own sake. Robert White (1959, 1963) introduced two motivational concepts to discuss the ego. Effectance motivation is the motive to have an effect or an impact on your surroundings. White believed this is a basic motive. During early childhood, it\'s the major outlet for the ego\'s energies. This motive evolves into competence motivation, the motive to be effective in dealing with the environment. This motive underlies adaptive ego functioning. Competence motivation can be exercised endlessly, as there are always new competencies to attain. The competence motive thus moves the person toward ever-new challenges and masteries. Alfred Adler (1927, 1929, 1931), another ego psychologist, also thought that people strive for greater competence, but for different reasons. Adler proposed that whenever a person has feelings of inferiority (any sense of inadequacy), a compensatory process is activated and the person strives for superiority. Adler believed that inferiority feelings and superiority strivings cycle with each other constantly. The result is that people keep working to get better, more proficient at what they do. Adler viewed the struggle for increased competence to be an important part of healthy ego functioning, calling it the "great upward drive." He believed that healthy people continue to function this way throughout life. In both of these views, the primary goal of the ego is to better adapt to the world. Adaptation has two aspects. The first is learning to restrain impulses. Doing so lets you gain better command of your transactions with the world and avoid trouble from acting impulsively. Part of adaptation, though, is being flexible in dealing with the world. Thus, the second aspect of adaptation is knowing when to restrain yourself and when to behave more freely. These two issues lie at the heart of the work of ego psychologists Jeanne H. Block and Jack Block (1980; J. Block, 2002; J. Block & Block, 2006). They called the first aspect of adaptation ego control. This is the extent to which the person inhibits impulses. At one extreme are people who undercontrol---who can\'t delay gratification, who express their feelings and desires immediately. At the other end are people who overcontrol----who delay gratification endlessly, inhibit their actions and feelings, and insulate themselves from outside distractions. The other aspect of ego functioning is ego resiliency. This is flexibility. It\'s the capacity to modify your usual level of ego control---in either direction---to adapt to a given situation. People low in ego resilience can\'t break out of their usual way of relating to the world, even when it\'s temporarily good to do so. People who are ego resilient are resourceful and adapt well to changing circumstances. Object relations theories were developed by several people. They share two broad themes (Klein, 1987; St. Clair, 1986). First, they all emphasize that a person's pattern of relating to others is laid down in early childhood. Second, they all assume that these patterns tend to recur over and over throughout life. One influential object relations theorist was Margaret Mahler (1968; Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975; see also Blanck & Blanck, 1986). She believed that newborns begin life in a state of psychological fusion with others. In her view, personality development is a process of breakingdown this fusion, of becoming an individual who's separate and distinct. The period when the infant is fused with its mother is called symbiosis. Boundaries between mother and self haven't arisen yet (e.g., the infant doesn't distinguish its mother's nipple from its own thumb). At around six months of age, the child starts to become aware of its separate existence. Mahler called this process separation--individuation. It involves gradual exploration away from mother. The child has a built-in conflict between two pressures during this time. The first is a wish to be taken care of by mother and united with her. The second is a fear of being overwhelmed in a merger with her and a desire to establish its own selfhood. Thus, the child strives for individuation and separation but also wants the earlier sense of union. This conflict is important in adult behavior, as well. The mother's behavior during this period is important to the child's later adjustment. She should combine emotional availability with a gentle nudge toward independence. If the mother is too present in the child's experience, the child won't be able to establish a separate existence. If the mother pushes too much toward individuation, the child will experience a sense of rejection and loss called separation anxiety. Eventually (at about age 3), the child develops a stable mental representation of its mother. Now, mother will be with the child all the time symbolically. The object relation is internalized. In the future, the child will view its mother through this image and will generalize this image to other people. In many ways, the child will act toward others as though they were its mother (and father). Often, the early years include some stresses---a sense of rejection from a parent or too much smothering fusion. If so, the stresses are carried by the child's internal object representations into later life. What matters isn't what ­happens in childhood but what the child experiences as happening. Because the internalization derives from infant experiences, there can be a lot of distortion. You may not be very persuaded by the idea that you relate to others as though they were your mother and father. You may think you treat everyone uniquely. But guess what: the more someone resembles your significant other, the more you react to that person as though he or she was that significant other (Kraus, & Chen, 2010). An object relations theorist would say that you think you treat everyone uniquely because you're looking at yourself from inside your patterns (Andersen & Chen, 2002). Being inside them, you don't notice them. You notice only variations within the patterns. You think the variations are big, but in many ways, they're really quite minor. In this view, the pattern of relating to others that you develop in early childhood forms the core of your way of relating to others for the rest of your life. Indeed, this pattern forms the very core of your personality. You take it for granted, as much as any other aspect of your personality. It's the lens through which you view not just your parents but the entire social world. 9.1.1: Self Psychology Another important neoanalyst was Heinz Kohut. Because Kohut felt that relationships form the structure of the self, his theory is called self psychology (A. Goldberg, 1985). Despite this label, his theory focuses on experiences that others termed object relations. Kohut began with the idea that people have an essential narcissism: a pattern of self-centered needs that must be satisfied through others. He coined the term selfobject to refer to someone who helps satisfy your needs. In early childhood, selfobjects (parents) are experienced as extensions of the self. Later, selfobject means any person as he or she is experienced within the structure of the self. Even then, a selfobject exists from the self's point of view and to serve the self's needs. Kohut thought the child acquires a self through interaction with parents. Parents engage in mirroring: giving support to the child and responding in an empathic, accepting way. Mirroring gratifies the child's narcissistic needs, because it makes the child temporarily the center of the universe. The child's sense of self is grandiose. The illusion of all importance must be sustained to some degree throughout development, to create a sense of self-importance to be carried into adulthood. It also must be tempered, though, so that the child can deal with difficulties and frustrations later in life. In a healthy personality, the grandiosity is modified and channeled into realistic activities. It turns into ambition and self-esteem. If there are severe failures of mirroring, though, the child never develops an adequate sense of self. Later in life, this child will have deeper narcissistic needs than other people, because his or her needs have been unmet. As a result, the child will continue relating to other people immaturely. A delicate balance is required here: The parents must give the child enough mirroring to nurture development but not too much. This is similar, in some ways, to the balance in Mahler's theory regarding separation--individuation and fusion with the other. Mirroring continues to be important in relationships throughout life (Tesser, 1991). Later mirroring involves transference from parents to other selfobjects. This use of the term means that you transfer the orientation you've developed to your parents to other people, using it as a frame of reference for them (Andersen & Chen, 2002). In effect, other people become parent substitutes, and you expect them to mirror you as your parents did. This is like Mahler's idea that the internal object relation corresponding to a parent is used in forming later relationships. 9.2: Attachment Theory and Personality 9.2 Identify the basic elements of attachment The ideas discussed thus far fit, in many ways, with the ideas proposed by theorists interested in the infant's attachment to its mother (e.g., Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1969, 1988; Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986). Attachment is an emotional connection. The need for such a connection is a basic part of the human experience (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Early attachment patterns can influence the quality of later social relationships. The first attachment theorist was John Bowlby. He pointed out that the clinging and following of the infant serve an important biological purpose: They keep the infant close to the mother. That, in turn, increases the infant's chances of survival. A basic theme in attachment theory is that mothers (and others) who are responsive to the infant create a secure base and safe haven for the child. The infant needs to know that the major person in his or her life is dependable---is there when needed. This sense of security provides a place of comfort (a safe haven) when the child is threatened (see Figure 9.1). It also gives the child a base from which to explore the world. Thus, temporary dependence on the caregiver fuels future exploration. Figure 9.1 Three defining features of attachment and three functions of attachment. Attachment provides a secure base for exploration, keeps the infant nearby and safe, and provides a source of comfort.  Figure 9.1 Full Alternative Text Attachment theory also holds that the child builds implicit mental "working models" of the self, others, and the nature of relationships. These working models are later used to relate to the world (Bowlby, 1969). This idea resembles Mahler's beliefs about object representations and Kohut's beliefs about selfobjects. To assess infant attachment, Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues devised a procedure called the strange situation (Ainsworth et al., 1978). It is a series of events involving the infant's mother and a stranger. Of special relevance are two times when the mother returns after the infant has been left alone with the stranger. Raters observe the infant throughout, paying special attention to its responses to the mother's return. The strange situation procedure identified several patterns of infant behavior. Secure attachment was shown by normal distress when the mother left and happy enthusiasm when she returned. Two main types of insecure attachment were revealed, as well. An ambivalent (or resistant) infant was clingy and became very upset when the mother left. The response to the mother's return mixed approach with rejection and anger. The infant sought contact with the mother but then angrily resisted all efforts to be soothed. In the avoidant pattern, the infant stayed calm when the mother left and responded to her return by ignoring her. It was as though this infant expected to be abandoned and was retaliating in kind. Observations made in the home also suggested a basis for variations in attachment (Ainsworth, 1983; Ainsworth et al., 1978). Mothers of securely attached infants responded quickly to their infants' crying and returned their smiles. They showed synchronous behavior---making replies to a variety of infant actions (Isabella, Belsky, & von Eye, 1989). Mothers of ambivalent babies were inconsistent: sometimes responsive and sometimes not. Mothers of avoidant babies were distant, radiating a kind of emotional unavailability and sometimes being outright rejecting or neglectful. In other research, women with secure infants spoke to their children using richer language than they used when speaking with a stranger (Ritter, Bucci, Beebe, Jaffe, & Maskit, 2007). Not surprisingly, the personality of the mother predicts how she interacts with the infant (Kochanska, Friesenborg, Lange, & Martel, 2004). Interestingly enough, it's not always the actions themselves that differ between groups but rather the timing. For example, mothers of secure and avoidant infants don't differ in how much total time they spend holding their babies. Mothers of avoidant babies, however, are less likely to hold their babies when the babies signal they want to be held. Timing can be very important. On the basis of findings such as these, Hazan and Shaver (1994) characterized the secure, ambivalent, and avoidant attachment patterns as reflecting three possible answers to the question: Can I count on my attachment figure to be available and responsive when needed? The possible answers---"yes," "no," and "maybe"---correspond to the secure, avoidant, and ambivalent patterns. In theory, it's possible to get past an insecure attachment by forming a better one with someone later on. This is hard, however, because insecure attachment leads to actions that alienate others. This interferes with creating a new attachment. The clinginess mixed with rejection in the ambivalent pattern can be hard to deal with. (Recall the chapter opening, describing an adult version of this.) So can the aloofness and distance of the avoidant pattern. Both patterns cause others to react negatively. That, in turn, reconfirms the perceptions that led to the patterns in the first place. Indeed, people with an insecure attachment pattern appear to distort their memory of interactions over time to make them more consistent with their working models (Feeney & Cassidy, 2003). An insecure pattern thus has a self-perpetuating quality. The patterns seem fairly stable early in life (see Table 9.1). In one study, infant attachment coded at age 1 could be identified by responses to parents at age 6 for 84% of the children (Main & Cassidy, 1988, Study 1). Secure children were still acting secure, avoidant ones were still withdrawn, and ambivalent ones were still being both dependent and sullen. A later project (Simpson, Collins, Tran, & Haydon, 2007) reported on children from early childhood to their early 20s. Securely attached infants were more socially competent in elementary school (by teacher ratings). That, in turn, predicted secure relations with close friends at age 16, which predicted more positive emotional experiences in adult romantic relationships. An even more recent project found that maternal caregiving at 18 months predicted how the participants related to their partners and peers 20 years later (Zayas, Mischel, Shoda, & Aber, 2011). Table 9.1  Three forms of attachment-related behavior, viewed at 1 year and 6 years of age 9.2.1: Attachment Patterns in Adults Attachment behavior in childhood is interesting, but more relevant at present is how these ideas relate to adult personality. Research on this question began with the idea that the working models of relationships formed in childhood are carried into adulthood (with some adjustments along the way). These working models influence the adult's social relationships. In that way, they represent the core of personality. During the past two decades, research on adult attachment patterns has exploded (see Cassidy & Shaver, in press; Feeney, 2006; Feeney, Collins, Van Vleet, & Tomlinson, 2013; Mikulincer & Goodman, 2006; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Monin, Feeney, & Schulz, 2012; Simpson & Rholes, 2015). The first study was done by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987). Participants classified themselves (from descriptions) as being secure, ambivalent, or avoidant. Then they described the most important romance of their life (past or current) on several scales (see Figure 9.2). Figure 9.2 Adults with a secure attachment pattern report higher levels of trust in their romantic partner than do others, those with an ambivalent pattern report greater obsessive preoccupation, and those with an avoidant pattern report lower levels of acceptance of their partners' imperfections.  Figure 9.2 Full Alternative Text Secure adults described their most important love relationship as more happy, friendly, and trusting, compared with adults in the other two groups. Their relationships also had lasted longer. Avoidant adults were less likely than the others to report accepting their lovers' imperfections. Ambivalent adults experienced love as an obsessive preoccupation, with a desire for reciprocation and union, extreme emotional highs and lows, and extremes of both attraction and jealousy. These people were also more likely than others to report that a relationship had been "love at first sight." Hazan and Shaver (1987) also investigated the mental models these people held on the nature of relationships. Secure adults said, in effect, that love is real and when it comes, it stays. Avoidants were more cynical, saying love doesn't last. Ambivalents showed their ambivalence: They said falling in love is easy and happens often, but they also agreed that love doesn't last. Other research confirms that ambivalent college students are most likely to have obsessive and dependent love relationships (Collins & Read, 1990). Their obsessive tendency to seek reassurance leads to greater conflict and stress in their relationships (Eberhart & Hamman, 2009). They are also the most obsessive about lost loves (Davis, Shaver, & Vernon, 2003). Avoidants are the least likely to report being in love in the present or in the past (Feeney & Noller, 1990), the least interested in knowing their partners' intimate thoughts and feelings (Rholes, Simpson, Tran, Martin, & Friedman, 2007), the least comfortable with sex (Birnbaum, Reis, Mikulincer, Gillath, & Orpaz, 2006), and the most likely to cope in self-reliant ways after a breakup (Davis et al., 2003). Secures show the most interdependence, commitment, and trust (Mikulincer, 1998; Simpson, 1990). If they experience a breakup, they turn to family and friends as safe havens (Davis et al., 2003). The many ways in which adult attachment affects the course of romantic relationships have become the focus of a great deal of additional research in the past few years (Mikulincer & Goodman, 2006). 9.2.2: How Many Patterns? The proliferation of work on adult attachment has raised many issues, complicating the picture (see also Box 9.2). Early studies used the three main categories from infancy work, but another approach also emerged. Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) started with Bowlby's notion of working models, and focused on models of self and other. They argued for two dimensions: a positive-versus-negative model of the self (the self is lovable or not) and a positive-versus-negative model of others (others are trustworthy or not). The dimensions that result are termed anxiety and avoidance, respectively (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). Box 9.2 How Do You Measure Adult Attachment? People who study attachment patterns in adults measure attachment in two quite different ways. One procedure asks people to respond to a series of statements expressing opinions about their current close relationships. Such self-report scales include items that reflect greater versus lesser attachment ambivalence and items that reflect greater versus lesser attachment avoidance. Most of the research on attachment described in this chapter used some measure of this general sort. A very different way to measure adult attachment is called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). This interview asks people to talk about their early experiences with caregivers. When the information that's gathered is coded, however, it's not so much what people recall that's coded but whether the person has arrived at a coherent narrative regarding the childhood experiences. Key issues are whether people either lack childhood memories or idealize their caregivers (both of which are taken as signs of avoidance) and whether people seem preoccupied by unresolved loss or abuse (taken as a sign of anxious attachment). Although there are conceptual parallels between these measurement procedures, there is very little empirical overlap (Roisman, 2009; Roisman et al., 2007). Put differently, people who score as secure on a self-report measure are only barely more likely to score as secure on the AAI than are other people. Yet despite the lack of convergence, both measures predict outcomes that are relevant to the theory. Why? Roisman et al. (2007) concluded that self-reports were most reliably associated with the quality of adult relationships under conditions of high interpersonal stress; in contrast, the AAI was linked to relationship quality whether stress was high or low. It's tempting to speculate that these measures differ in the same way that implicit versus self-ascribed measures of motives differ (see Chapter 5). However, there is at least some evidence that self-reports of attachment relate to implicit attachment related attitudes (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002), which would tend to contradict that view. Nonetheless, it remains an intriguing possibility: maybe how adults perceive their current relationships and how they talk about their early lives derive from different sets of experience and are represented differently in the mind. With this approach, hypotheses typically are tested using the two dimensions, with each person having a score on each. Sometimes, groups are formed by combining extremes on models of self and others (see Figure 9.3). Two of the groups that result from this are equivalent to the secures and ambivalents from the three-group approach. However, avoidants from that approach split into two separate groups in this approach, which are called dismissive and fearful, depending on whether attachment anxiety is also involved. Figure 9.3 Combinations of two dimensions of positive and negative views of self and other, yielding four attachment patterns (termed anxiety and avoidance). In color are shown the names of the comparable patterns from the three-category model. Four outcomes shown in the diagram are as follows: Both model of self and model of other are positive: Secure Model of self is positive but model of other is negative: Dismissing (Avoidant) Model of self is negative and model of other is positive: Preoccupied (Ambivalent) Both model of self and model of other are negative: Fearful (Avoidant). Each approach has a conceptual strength. The two-dimensional approach nicely conveys the sense that two separate issues are involved in the attachment response. The three-category approach nicely conveys the sense that a significant other can be available, unpredictable, or unavailable. Even so, the personality literature on attachment has moved largely to the two-dimensional approach. 9.2.3: Stability and Specificity Two more questions about this view of personality concern its stability and its generality. If the attachment pattern is part of personality, it should remain fairly stable. Does it? If attachment concerns key figures in one's life, are the same patterns used in casual interactions or groups? First, let's consider stability. There's evidence of stability over both short and longer periods. In one study, weekly assessments of attachment were quite consistent across the span of a year (Fraley, Vicary, Brumbaugh, & Roisman, 2011). Although the findings over the long term are mixed, attachment seems moderately stable over fairly long periods. Fraley (2002) concluded from a review of studies that a prototype for close relations arises in infancy and doesn't go away, despite new experiences. On the other hand, moderate stability is not total stability. Some people change more than others. People who vary in self-portrayal over time seem to be insecure at the core but periodically feel more secure (Davila, Burge, & Hammen, 1997). Research on longer-term stability is ongoing (Grossmann, Grossmann, & Waters, 2005; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). What about specificity? Does each person have one pattern of relating to others, or do people have different patterns for different relationships? The answer seems to be that people have many patterns. Even infants may display one pattern to one parent and a different pattern to the other parent. This diversity in relational behavior also appears in adults (Baldwin, Keelan, Fehr, Enns, & Koh-Rangarajoo, 1996; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Cook, 2000; La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000; Overall, Fletcher, & Friesen, 2003; Pierce & Lydon, 2001). For example, one study had participants define each of their 10 closest relationships in terms of the three categories (secure, ambivalent, and avoidant). Across the 10 descriptions, almost everyone used at least two patterns and nearly half used all three (Baldwin et al., 1996). There's also evidence that people have patterns of attachment to groups that are distinct from their patterns for close relationships (Smith, Murphy, & Coats, 1999). There's even evidence that religious beliefs involve yet another pattern of attachment (Kirkpatrick, 1998). Thus, how people relate to others in their lives---even significant others---does seem to have variability. There is likely a general orientation for approaching new relationships (Feeney, Cassidy, & Ramos-Marcuse, 2008) or a central tendency among the various orientations that a person takes (Crittenden, 1990; Pierce & Lydon, 2001), and it may well derive from early childhood experiences. But adult behavior definitely is more complex than would be the case if each person had only a single way of relating to others. 9.2.4: Other Reflections of Adult Attachment A surprising range of behaviors has been tied to people's attachment patterns. Hazan and Shaver (1990) studied links to people's orientations to work. Recall that ambivalence involves a sense of insecurity. Consistent with this, ambivalents reported unhappiness with the recognition they got at work and their degree of job security. They were also most likely to say their work was motivated by a desire for others' approval. Avoidants reported a desire to keep busy with work, and they socialized less during leisure time. Hazan and Shaver suggested that avoidants use work as a way to escape from their lack of relationships. A good deal of research has looked at how attachment patterns relate to both comfort seeking and caregiving in stressful situations (Collins, Ford, Guichard, & Feeney, 2006). In one study (Simpson, Rholes, & Nelligan, 1992), women were told they were going to do a task that creates anxiety. They then waited for five minutes with their boyfriends. As anxiety increased, secure women sought support from their partners, talked about being nervous, and so on. Avoidant women did the opposite: The more anxious they got, the less they sought support. The men also varied. Among secure men, the more anxiety their partners showed, the more reassuring they were. Among avoidant men, the more anxiety their partners showed, the less reassuring they were (see also Kobak & Hazan, 1991). Other researchers have found that avoidant men even get angry if their partners show signs of distress (Rholes, Simpson, & Oriña, 1999). Interestingly, avoidance also predicts greater stress reactivity during discussion of a relationship conflict (Powers, Pietromonaco, Gunlicks, & Sayer, 2006). This pattern of results has been confirmed and extended in several ways. The tendency to give less support to stressed partners has been shown among avoidant women as well as men (Simpson, Rholes, Oriña, & Grich, 2002). The pattern of findings also holds when different methods are used. For example, Feeney and Collins (2001) found that avoidance related to lower scores on a measure of responsive caregiving; avoidance also predicted low scores on prosocial orientation, trust, and interdependence. Anxiety related to compulsive caregiving and also to higher levels of egoistic motivation and lower levels of trust. Higher anxiety and avoidance have also been linked to lower sexual and marital satisfaction among married persons (Butzer & Campbell, 2008). Seeking and supplying support have been looked at in many situations. Fraley and Shaver (1998) observed couples at an airport, where one person was leaving on a flight. They found that avoidant women made less contact, did less caregiving, and displayed more behavioral avoidance than secure women. Westmaas and Silver (2001) looked at how students reacted to a stranger they thought was being treated for cancer. Avoidants were least supportive in interacting with her. Another study looked at the experience of becoming a new parent (Rholes, Simpson, & Friedman, 2006). Avoidants experienced more stress and found parenting less satisfying compared to people with other attachment patterns. Yet another study looked at parental adjustment after the loss of a child (Wijngaards de Meij et al., 2007 b). Both types of attachment insecurity were associated with elevated levels of grief. Additional research suggests that the sense of attachment security makes people more compassionate and responsive to the needs of others in general (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005). This is true even if the sense of security is increased experimentally, rather than varying naturally (Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005). Thus, the sense of attachment security promotes altruism for others in need. This may be due in part to how people react to signs of others' suffering. Compared to the securely attached, avoidants experience less distress and anxious experience more distress when there are signs their partners are suffering (Monin, Schulz, Feeney, & Cook, 2010). Not surprisingly, people's motivation for helping others depends on their attachment style. Avoidants are more likely to report helping because they want something in return or they feel obligated and want to avoid the negative consequences of not helping. They're less likely to report helping because they enjoy it or have a genuine concern over their partner's well-being (Feeney & Collins, 2013; Feeney et al., in press). Secure attachment is related to having autonomous motives for engaging in family caregiving and also to finding benefits in caregiving (Kim, Carver, Deci, & Kasser, 2008). On the receiving side, secures explain away a partner's unsupportive behavior, while insecures exaggerate the negative implications of a partner's failure to offer help. Other research has looked at how people cope with stress. In a study of war veterans and their wives, anxious attachment was linked to severity of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in veterans and secondary traumatic stress in their wives (Ein-Dor, Doron, Solomon, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010). Another study concerned threats of missile attacks in Israel (Mikulincer, Florian, & Weller, 1993). Avoidants used more distancing-type coping (trying not to think about the situation) than did other people. Ambivalents had higher levels of ineffective emotion-focused reactions (e.g., self-criticism, wishing they could change how they felt). Secure people used their social support resources more than did the other groups. Recall that one aspect of secure infant attachment is the sense of having a secure base. This sense has also been studied among adults. Security relates to an exploratory orientation (Feeney, 2004; Feeney & Thrush, 2010; Green & Campbell, 2000; Luke, Sedikides, & Carnelley, 2012). When secure people must temporarily be dependent, they use the reassurance to help move to greater self-sufficiency afterward (Feeney, 2007). Having a partner who acts as a secure base helps people perform better on exploratory tasks and increases their self-esteem afterward (Feeney & Thrush, 2010). Security also reduces the typical negative reaction to outgroups (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001), suggesting a willingness to explore. In contrast, the avoidant pattern leads people to perceive hostile intent behind others' behavior (Mikulincer, 1998). Also of interest is how people with various attachment patterns relate to one another. Not unsurprisingly, secures are most desired as partners, and they tend to wind up with each other (Collins & Read, 1990). Relationships in which the man is avoidant and relationships in which the woman is ambivalent are unsatisfying to both partners. On the other hand, there's evidence that avoidant men with ambivalent women tend to be stable pairings, despite the dissatisfactions (Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994). Why? Avoidant men avoid conflict, which may help the relationship run smoothly; ambivalent women may work harder at holding things together. Pairings of avoidants with avoidants and of ambivalents with ambivalents are rare (Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994). This fits with the idea that people with insecure attachment patterns steer away from partners who would treat them as they were treated in infancy. Avoidants avoid partners who will be emotionally inaccessible, and ambivalents avoid partners who will be inconsistent (Collins & Read, 1990; Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994; Pietromonaco & Carnelley, 1994; Simpson, 1990). 9.2.5: Attachment Patterns and the Five-Factor Model Recall that many people are interested in how various views of personality relate to the five-factor model of traits. This has also been examined with adult attachment patterns. Several studies using the three-category view of attachment found strong links between measures of adult attachment and two traits from the five-factor model (Carver, 1997; Shaver & Brennan, 1992). Avoidants are introverted, secures are extraverted, and ambivalents are high in neuroticism. An even stronger correspondence seems implied by the alternate approach to attachment. As noted earlier, it uses two dimensions, often termed attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety. Although the focus of both dimensions is on relationships, the dimensions strongly resemble introversion--extraversion and neuroticism. Maybe avoidants aren't that interested in social connections because they're introverts. If we add the twist of viewing extraversion as a desire for social incentives (from Chapter 7) and the idea that neuroticism is essentially anxiety proneness, the fit is even closer. It might even be argued that the attachment patterns represent relationship-focused versions of extraversion and neuroticism. This reasoning has been supported with regard to attachment anxiety and neuroticism, but the situation is a little more complex with regard to avoidance. Avoidance, measured by the scale that pits avoidance against security, has associations with both extraversion and agreeableness (Noftle & Shaver, 2006). Another question that might be raised is whether the correlated measures (attachment and "big five" scales) overlap in predicting outcomes or contribute separately. The answer appears to be that they make partially separate contributions to such experiences as relationship quality (Noftle & Shaver, 2006) and distress during bereavement (Wijngaards-de Meij et al., 2007a). Other studies have also found that measures of extraversion and neuroticism did not duplicate the effects of attachment patterns (Fraley et al., 2011; Simpson et al., 2002). So even though there is overlap, the attachment dimensions don't seem identical with the "big five" traits. Do these patterns in personality arise from patterns of parenting (as held by psychosocial theorists)? Or are they manifestations of genetically determined traits---manifestations that simply happen to be social? One study of a large national adult sample found that reports of interpersonal trauma (e.g., abuse, threat with a weapon, parental violence) related to insecure adult attachment (Mickelson, Kessler, & Shaver, 1997). So did a history of parental depression and anxiety. These findings suggest a social origin to the patterns (see also Box 9.3). However, another study found that overlap of adult attachment with "big five" traits rested on shared genetic influences (Donnellan, Burt, Levendosky, & Klump, 2008). So the jury apparently is still out. Box 9.3 How Impactful Is Early Childhood Adversity? Adult attachment is not the only thing affected by adverse childhood experiences. There has been a surge of interest in recent years in how childhood trauma affects personality, disorder, and well-being more generally. This is an important question, because childhood trauma is much more common than you may think. One large study (Gilbert et al., 2009) estimated that 5% to 35% of all children experience physical abuse during childhood, 5% to 30% experience sexual abuse, 4% to 10% experience emotional abuse, and 6% to 12% experience parental neglect (see also Dube et al., 2001). Does abuse or other adversity relate to aspects of personality other than attachment pattern? The answer seems to be yes. Childhood adversity has been linked to higher neuroticism (Rosenman & Rodgers, 2006), and to lower agreeableness, higher anger/aggression, and more focus on material rewards in life (Carver, Johnson, McCullough, Forster, & Joormann, 2014). All of these associations were independent of adult depressive symptoms and gender. Some believe that early adversity creates an orientation toward the world in which you have to exploit the world before it exploits you (Belsky, 2012). At more extreme levels, early adversity predicts vulnerability to depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and alcohol and substance abuse (Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000; Simpson & Miller, 2002; Widom, Dumont, & Czaja, 2007). It has also been associated with personality disorders (MacMillan et al., 2001; Penza, Heim, & Nemeroff, 2003). Childhood adversity also predicts physical health problems in adulthood (Wegman & Stetler, 2009). For example, Midei, Matthews, and Bromberger (2010) found a link between childhood adversity and a tendency to deposit weight around the abdomen, which relates to diverse health problems. Childhood trauma also predicts who develops a health problem called metabolic syndrome during mid-life (Midei, Matthews, Chang, & Bromberger, 2013). Together, these findings suggest that childhood adversity in itself predicts aspects of adult personality. It also puts the person at risk for mental and physical disorders. 9.3: Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development 9.3 Summarize Erikson's theory of psychosocial development We turn now to what is probably the most elaborate of psychosocial theories: that of Erik Erikson (1950, 1963, 1968). Erikson adopted Freud's view that personality develops in a series of stages. However, whereas Freud's is a theory of psychosexual development, Erikson's is a theory of psychosocial development. Another difference pertains to the age span involved. The stages that Freud described unfold in the first few years of life. In contrast, Erikson believed that personality evolves throughout life, from birth through maturity to death. He also believed no part of life is more important than any other. Erikson was thus one of the first to propose the idea of life-span development.  According to the principle of life-span development, all periods of a person's life are important, infancy through adulthood---even old age. 9.3.1: Ego Identity, Competence, and the Experience of Crisis The central theme of Erikson's theory is ego identity and its development (Erikson, 1968, 1974). Ego identity is the consciously experienced sense of self, derived from transactions with social reality. A person's ego identity changes constantly in response to events in the social world. To Erikson, forming and maintaining a strong sense of ego identity is critical. A second major theme in Erikson's theory concerns competence and personal adequacy. His stages focus on aspects of mastery. If a stage is managed well, the person emerges with a sense of competence. If not, the person has feelings of inadequacy. This theme in Erikson's theory---that a desire for competence is a motivating force behind people's actions---is similar in many ways to White's ideas about competence, discussed in Box 9.1. One difference is that Erikson focused more specifically on competence in the social environment. Erikson viewed development as a series of periods in which some issue is prominent. In his view, people experience a psychosocial crisis, or conflict, during each stage. The terms crisis and conflict are interchangeable here. They have a special meaning, though, that differs from the use of either word in everyday speech. Here, a crisis is a turning point: a period when the potential for growth is high but the person is also quite vulnerable. Each crisis is fairly long (none is shorter than about a year), and some are quite long (perhaps 30 years). Thus, Erikson's use of the word conveys the sense of crucial importance more than the sense of time pressure. The conflict in each crisis isn't a confrontation between persons, nor is it a conflict within personality. Rather, it's a struggle between attaining some psychological quality versus failing to attain it. To Erikson, the conflict never ends. Even handling the conflict in the period when it's most intense doesn't mean having mastered it once and for all. The conflict is always there to some degree, and you confront it repeatedly in different forms throughout life. Erikson identified eight stages. Each focuses on some aspect of transactions with social reality. Each has a conflict, or crisis. Each conflict pits two possibilities against each other, as a pair of opposed psychological qualities. One of the pair is obviously adaptive; the other appears less so. People negotiate each stage by developing a balance between the qualities for which the stage is named. The point isn't just to acquire the good quality. In fact, it's important that the ego incorporate both sides of the conflict, at least a little. Having only the quality that seems good creates problems. For example, if you had only basic trust and absolutely no sense of basic mistrust, you'd be unable to deal effectively with a world that's sometimes not trustworthy. Nonetheless, successful negotiation of a stage does imply that the balance is weighted more toward the positive value than the negative one. If this occurs, the person emerges from the crisis with a positive orientation toward future events concerning that conflict. Erikson used several terms to refer to this positive orientation: ego quality, ego strength, and virtue (Erikson, 1964; Stevens, 1983). Once established, these qualities remain part of your ­personality. Erikson was very reluctant to specify age norms for stages. He believed that each person has a unique timetable. Thus, it's hard to say when each stage will begin and end for a person. The ages given in the following sections are only rough approximations. 9.3.2: Infancy The first four stages parallel stages of psychosexual development outlined by Freud. The first is infancy, roughly the first year (see Figure 9.4). The conflict at this stage---the most fundamental crisis of life---is between a sense of basic trust versus basic mistrust. The infant is totally dependent on others to meet its most basic needs. If the needs are met, the infant develops a sense of security and trust. This is reflected by the infant's feeding easily, sleeping well, and eliminating regularly. Caretakers can leave the infant alone for short periods without causing too much distress, because the infant has learned to trust that they'll return. Mistrust is reflected by fitful sleep, fussiness in feeding, constipation, and greater distress when the infant is left alone. Figure 9.4 Erikson's eight psychosocial stages, the approximate age range in which each occurs, and the crisis that dominates each stage. The sense of trust is extremely important. It provides a basis for believing that the world is predictable---especially relationships. Trust is enhanced by interactions in which caregivers are attentive, affectionate, and responsive. A sense of mistrust is created by inconsistent treatment, emotional unavailability, or rejection. This portrayal closely resembles ideas concerning object relations and attachment patterns. A predominance of trust over mistrust gives rise to the ego strength of hope. Hope is an enduring belief that wishes are attainable. It's optimism about life.  Children often seem driven to figure things out on their own. Successful mastery of the environment is important in developing feelings of competence. 9.3.3: Early Childhood The second stage is early childhood (the second and third years of life). The crisis of this stage concerns children's efforts to gain control over their actions. It's about creating a sense of autonomy in actions versus shame and doubt about being able to act independently. Erikson agreed with Freud that toilet training is an important event, but for different reasons. To Erikson, acquiring control over bladder and bowels helps create feelings of autonomy (self-direction). Achieving control over these functions means you're not at the mercy of your body's impulses. But that's just one way to gain these feelings. Feelings of autonomy and competence emerge when children interact effectively with others. If the efforts lead to failure, ridicule, or criticism---or if parents don't let children act on their own---the result is shame and self-doubt. Managing this conflict leads to the ego quality of will: a determination to exercise free choice. Much of the research on Erikson's theory focuses on the idea that successful management of one crisis prepares you to deal with the next one. Consider how this idea applies to the first two stages. The sense of basic trust is reflected in secure attachment. In one study (Hazen & Durrett, 1982), attachment was assessed at one year; then at two-and-a-half years the children and their mothers came to a laboratory. While they explored a play area there, observers coded how many times the child went alone (or led the mother) to a new part of the area---action that reflects autonomy and self-initiation of behavior. They also coded how often the child was led by the mother into new parts of the area---action that's not autonomous. As shown in Figure 9.5, children who had been securely attached a year and a half earlier explored more than those who had been less securely attached. Furthermore, more of the exploration was self-initiated (autonomous) among the securely attached. Similar results have been reported by others (e.g., Matas, Arend, & Sroufe, 1978). Thus, a sense of basic trust seems to promote more autonomy later on. Figure 9.5 Children with a greater sense of basic trust and security at 1 year explore more at 2½ years of age than do less securely attached children, and a higher proportion of their exploration is self-initiated, or autonomous. This finding suggests that successful management of the first crisis of Erikson's theory prepares the child to do better with the second crisis. The first bar graph shows total amount of exploration for securely attached children and children with insecure attachment as 37.5 and 33.5 respectively. The second bar graph shows percent of exploration that was autonomous for securely attached children and children with insecure attachment as 95 and 75 respectively. The values given in the description are approximate. 9.3.4: Preschool The next period is preschool (from about 3 to 5). Being autonomous and capable of controlling your actions is an important start, but it's only a start. An ability to manipulate objects in the world leads to an increasing desire to exert influence, to make things happen---in short, a desire for power (McAdams, 1985). This period is the time when Freud saw Oedipal conflicts emerging. As we said earlier, people who are skeptical about the Oedipal conflict tend to view Freud's depiction as a metaphor for a more extensive power struggle between parents and child, who by now has become willful. Erikson focused on this power struggle. The conflict at this stage concerns initiative versus guilt. Children who take the initiative are seeking to impose their newly developed sense of will on their surroundings. They express and act on their curiosity as they explore and manipulate their world and ask about things going on around them. Acts and words can also be perilous, however. Action that's too powerful can cause others pain (e.g., grabbing a toy you want can distress another child). Asking too many questions can become tiresome to adults. If taking the initiative leads to disapproval, feelings of guilt will result. Because constantly exerting power does tend to produce some disapproval, initiative eventually must be tempered by restraint. If this crisis is managed well, the child emerges with the ego quality of purpose: the courage to pursue valued goals without fear of punishment. Does attaining a sense of basic trust during the first year foster later initiative? In one study (Lütkenhaus, Grossmann, & Grossmann, 1985), attachment was assessed at age 1 and the children were studied again at home at age 3. Those securely attached at age 1 were quicker to show initiative in interacting with a stranger than those who had been insecurely attached. During a game involving a failure, securely attached children responded by increasing their efforts, but the other children decreased their efforts. Thus, the sense of basic trust seems to provide groundwork for the sense of initiative and purpose. 9.3.5: School Age The next stage corresponds to Freud's latency period (from about 5 to 11). Erikson held that this period also has a conflict, which he called industry versus inferiority. The term industry reflects the fact that the child's life remains focused on doing things that have an impact. But now the nature of those efforts acquires a different shade of meaning. It's no longer enough to take the initiative and assert power. Now there's pressure to do things that others judge to be good. Industriousness isn't just doing things; it's doing things that others value. It's also doing things in ways that others regard as appropriate and commendable. The crisis over this sense of industry begins about when the child enters elementary school. School is aimed at teaching children to become productive and responsible members of society. The school years are also the period when intellectual skills are first tested. Children are urged to do well in school, and the adequacy of their performance is explicitly evaluated. The school experience also involves learning social roles. Children begin to learn about the nature of adult work. They're also being exposed to some of the tools of adult work. In former times, these were tools of farming, carpentry, and homemaking; today, it's more likely to be computers. Another role children are acquiring is that of citizenship. Thus, the child's sense of industry is being judged partly by how acceptable his or her behavior is to the group. Children with a strong sense of industry differ in several ways from children with less industry (Kowaz & Marcia, 1991). They tend to prefer reality-based activities over fantasy, and they are more able to distinguish the role of effort from that of ability in producing outcomes. These children get better grades, and they tend to agree more with statements that are socially desirable. To emerge from this stage successfully, children must feel they are mastering their tasks in a fashion that's acceptable to those around them. The danger at this stage is developing feelings of inferiority. Such feelings can arise when children are led by others to view their performance as inadequate or morally wrong. Managing the conflict between industry and inferiority results in the ego quality termed competence: the sense that one can do things that others value. 9.3.6: Adolescence Next comes adolescence, a period that begins with the physical changes of puberty and lasts until roughly age 20. This stage is a larger break with the past than any stage up to this point. Part of the sense of separation comes from the physical changes of puberty. Your body doesn't just get larger during this period but also changes in other ways. You also have desires you never had before. You're not quite the same person you used to be. But who are you? Part of the break with the past reflects the fact that you're now beginning to think explicitly about yourself and your life in relation to the adult world. You'll have to find your place in that world. Doing so requires you to decide what roles fit your identity. This, in turn, means knowing who you are. The crisis of this stage, then, is identity versus role confusion. Identity reflects an integrated sense of self. It's the answer to the question: Who am I? The phrase role confusion reflects the fact that every self has many facets that sometimes seem incompatible. The greater the incompatibility, the harder it is to pull the facets together, and the more confused you are. Worse yet, you can even be in a position where no role seems to fit your identity. To emerge from adolescence with a strong sense of identity requires the person to evolve in two ways. First, you must consolidate the self-views from previous stages, merging them in a way that's sensible. Second, this integrated self-view must be integrated with the view of you that others hold. This reflects the fact that identity is something you develop in a consensus with people you relate to. Only by considering both views does a full sense of identity emerge. Thus, from Erikson's perspective, identity derives from a blending of private and social self-conceptions. The result is a sense of personal continuity or inner congruence. Erikson placed great emphasis on the importance of developing a sense of identity. In many ways, he saw this as each person's major life task (see also Box 9.4). Box 9.4 The Theorist and the Theory: Erikson's Lifelong Search for Identity Erik Erikson's life had a distinct impact on the form his theory took, particularly his emphasis on the importance of attaining a sense of identity (see Friedman, 1999). Erikson was born in Germany in 1902 to Danish parents. His father abandoned his mother before he was born, and three years later she married Theodor Homburger, a Jewish physician. Erik wasn't told for years that Homburger wasn't his real father. He later referred to that as an act of "loving deceit." He grew up as Erik Homburger, a Jew with the appearance of a Scandinavian. Jews saw him as a gentile; gentiles saw him as a Jew. For this reason, he wasn't accepted by either group and began to form an image of himself as an outsider. By adolescence, he had been told of his adoption, and his identity confusion was further complicated by the realization that his ancestry was Danish, rather than German. As Erik wandered Europe during his early 20s, his feelings of a lack of identity deepened. He worked as a portrait painter but never developed a strong sense of identity as an artist. Eventually, he took a teaching job in Vienna at a school created for children of Freud's patients and friends. There, he became familiar with a number of psychoanalysts, including Anna Freud, with whom he went on to train as an analyst. In 1933, he moved to the United States, where he established a practice as a child analyst. As Erik Homburger, he was also part of the research team that Henry Murray brought together, which led to development of the motive approach to personality described in Chapter 5. In 1939, Homburger became a U.S. citizen. At that time, he took the name Erikson. This was an event---and a choice of name---that unquestionably had much personal meaning, symbolizing his full attainment of the sense of identity. In later years, Erikson spent time studying methods of childrearing and other aspects of cultural life among the Sioux of South Dakota and the Yurok of northern California. These studies were important for two reasons. First, they led to themes that would permeate Erikson's thinking about the importance of culture and society in identity. Second, they revealed to him symptoms of dislocation, feelings of having been uprooted and separated from cultural traditions. The members of these tribes appeared to have lost their sense of identity, much as Erikson had done earlier in his life. Erikson also saw similar qualities in the lives of veterans of World War II who returned with emotional difficulties. From all these experiences, Erikson came to believe that the attainment and preservation of a sense of identity---not wholly separate from but rather embedded in one's own society---was the critical task of growing up. This idea would emerge as one of the major themes of his viewpoint on personality. If the person fails to form a consolidated identity, the result is role confusion: an absence of direction in the sense of self, a self that is not well integrated. Role confusion is reflected in an inability to select a career (or a college major that will take you toward a career). Role confusion can also lead people to identify with popular heroes or groups (or even antiheroes) to try to fill the void. The virtue associated with successful identity formation is fidelity. Fidelity means truthfulness. It's the ability to live up to who you are, despite the contradictions that inevitably occur among the values you hold. 9.3.7:  Young Adulthood The next stage in Erikson's theory is young adulthood (through the mid-20s). The conflict here concerns the desire for intimacy versus isolation. Intimacy is a close, warm relationship with someone, with a sense of commitment to that person. Erikson saw intimacy as an issue in relationships of all kinds, nonsexual as well as sexual. True intimacy requires you to approach relationships in a caring and open way and to be willing to share the most personal aspects of yourself with others. You also must be open and receptive to others' disclosures. Intimacy requires the strength to live up to a commitment even when it requires sacrifice. Erikson believed people are capable of intimacy only if they have a strong sense of identity. The opposite pole is isolation: feeling apart from others and unable to make commitments to them. A person can drift into isolation if conditions aren't right for intimacy---if no one's there who fills his or her needs. Sometimes, though, people withdraw into isolation on their own---for instance, if they feel a relationship threatens their sense of separate identity. Withdrawing can have other results, however. People can become self-absorbed to the point that they aren't able to establish intimate relationships in the future (Erikson, 1982). The ego quality associated with the ability to be intimate is love, a mutuality that subdues the conflicts of separate identities. The theme that handling one crisis prepares you for the next one continues here. Erikson said people need a strong sense of identity to be able to attain intimacy. This idea was supported in a study that followed adolescents to early adulthood (Beyers & Seiffge-Krenke, 2010). It found that identity development at age 15 predicted intimacy at age 25. Another study looked at identity in college and ­intimacy in middle age (Kahn, Zimmerman, Csikszentmihalyi, & Getzels, 1985). Intimacy was assessed as whether subjects had married and, if so, whether the marriage had been disrupted by divorce. There was a clear link between a strong identity and a later capacity for intimacy. The effect differed slightly, however, between men and women (see Figure 9.6). Men with stronger identities were more likely to have married. Identity didn't predict whether the women married, but among those who had married, those with a strong identity were less likely to divorce. Conceptually similar findings have been reported by others (e.g., Orlofsky, Marcia, & Lesser, 1973; Schiedel & Marcia, 1985; Tesch & Whitbourne, 1982). Figure 9.6 Percentage of men who had ever been married during the 18-year period after art school and percentage of women who had married and whose marriages remained intact during the same period, as a function of previously assessed identity formation.  The first bar graph shows men\'s marital status. The vertical axis is labeled "Percent of Men Who Ever Married" and ranges from 0 to 100 in increments of 50. The horizontal axis is labeled "Level of Identity Formation" and shows two categories. The data shown by the bar graph is as follows: Low identity formation: 75 percent High identity formation: 98 percent. The second graph shows women\'s marital stability. The vertical axis is labeled "Percent of Women Whose Marriages Were Stable" and ranges from 0 to 100 in increments of 50. The horizontal axis is labeled "Level of Identity Formation" and shows two categories. The data shown by the bar graph is as follows: Low identity formation: 30 percent High identity formation: 70 percent The values used in the description are approximate. The other pole of the conflict of this stage---isolation---has drawn interest in its own right (e.g., Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; Peplau & Perlman, 1982; Shaver & Rubenstein, 1980; Weiss, 1973). The failure to have intimacy in your life is termed emotional isolation---more simply, loneliness. Emotional isolation feeds on itself. Recall that experiencing intimacy requires self-disclosure, opening oneself to others. Lonely people don't do this (Jones, Hobbes, & Hockenberg, 1982; Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991). They're also less responsive, ask fewer questions, and seem less interested in what the other person is saying. As a result, they are hard to get to know and are likely to remain lonely. 9.3.8: Adulthood Young adulthood is followed by adulthood, the longest of the psychosocial stages, which typically lasts into the mid-60s. The crisis of adulthood centers on being able to generate or nurture. For this reason, the central conflict in this stage is termed generativity versus stagnation. The desire for generativity is the desire to create things in the world that will outlive you (Kotre, 1984)---children, for example. By creating a new life tied to yours, you symbolically ensure your continuation into the future. Consistent with this idea, McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992) found that men with children scored higher on a self-report measure of generativity than did childless men. Generativity also relates to having a view of the self as a role model and source of wisdom for one's children (Hart, McAdams, Hirsch, & Bauer, 2001) and to a parenting style that fosters autonomy (Pratt, Danso, Arnold, Norris, & Filyer, 2001). One way in which feelings of generativity are displayed is by helping the next generation learn about life. Although generativity is partly a matter of creating and guiding the growth of the next generation, the concept is broader than that. It includes creating ideas or objects, teaching young people who aren't your own children, and anything that influences the future in a positive way (see Table 9.2). Erikson believed that the desire for generativity reflects a shift in focus from a close relationship with one other person (intimacy) to a broader concern with society as a whole. Interestingly, highly generative people tend to think of their lives in terms of a narrative in which they had advantages early in life, became sensitive to the suffering of other people, repeatedly transformed negative situations into positive outcomes, and pursued prosocial goals into the future (McAdams & Guo, 2015).  Consistent with this idea, highly generative persons express commitment to assisting the next generation; they also integrate that commitment with a sense of agency (Mansfield & McAdams, 1996; see also de St. Aubin, McAdams, & Kim, 2004; McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997). Once the quality of generativity emerges, it may continue through the rest of one's life (Zucker, Ostrove, & Stewart, 2002). Adults who fail to develop this sense of generativity drift into stagnation. Stagnation is an inability or unwillingness to give of oneself to the future. These people are preoccupied with their own concerns. They have a self-centered or self-indulgent quality that keeps them from deeper involvement in the world around them. Such an absence of generativity is related to poorer psychological well-being (Vandewater, Ostrove, & Stewart, 1997). If there's a positive balance of generativity, the ego quality that emerges is care. Care is a widening concern for whatever you've generated in your life, be it children, something in your work, or something that has emerged from your involvement with other people. 9.3.9: Old Age The final stage is maturity, or old age. This is the closing chapter of people's lives. It's a time when people look back and review the choices they made and reflect on their accomplishments (and failures) and on the turns their lives have taken. The crisis here is termed ego integrity versus despair. If you emerge from this review feeling that your life has had order and meaning, accepting the choices you made and the things you did, a sense of ego integrity emerges. This is a sense of satisfaction---a feeling that you wouldn't change much about your life. The opposite pole is despair---the feeling that your life was wasted. It's a sense of wishing you had done things differently but knowing it's too late. Instead of accepting your life's story as a valuable gift, there's bitterness that things turned out as they did. As Erikson predicted, there's evidence that people who have greater generativity at age 53 have greater ego integrity at age 62 (Torges, Stewart, & Duncan, 2008). Emerging from this life review with a sense of integrity creates the ego quality of wisdom. Wisdom involves meaning making and benevolence (Helson & Srivastava, 2002). It's an active concern with life and continued personal growth, even as one confronts the impending reality of death (see also Baltes & Staudinger, 1993; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003). 9.3.10: The Epigenetic Principle One more issue to address about Erikson's theory is that a given conflict is presumed to exist outside the stage in which it's focal. In embryology, epigenesis is the term used for the process by which a single cell turns into a complex organism. For this process to occur requires a "blueprint" at the start, with instructions for all the changes and their sequencing. Erikson applied this idea to his theory, saying that there's a readiness for each crisis at birth. The core issue of each crisis is especially focal during a particular stage, but all of the issues are always there. This principle has several implications. For one, as we've already said, it means that your orientation to a particular crisis is influenced by the outcomes of earlier ones. It also means that in resolving the core crisis of any stage, you're preparing solutions (in simple form) for the ones to come. As you deal in adolescence with the conflict between identity and role confusion, you're also moving toward handling the crisis of intimacy versus isolation. Finally, this principle means that crises aren't resolved once and for all. Your resolutions of previous conflicts are revisited and reshaped at each new stage of life (Sneed, Whitbourne, & Culang, 2006; Whitbourne, Sneed, & Sayer, 2009). 9.3.11: Identity as Life Story The sense of the epigenetic principle is well conveyed in some of the work of Dan McAdams. His work focuses partly on motivations that underlie personality (discussed in Chapter 5) and partly on the idea that people construct their identities as narratives, or life stories (McAdams, 1985, 1993, 2001). In his view, your story is not completed until the end of your life. It's constantly being written. Indeed, it's constantly under revision, just as your identity is constantly evolving. As in any good book, the opening chapters of your narrative set the stage for things that happen much later. Sometimes, future events are foreshadowed; sometimes, things that happen in early chapters create conditions that have to be reacted to later. As the chapters unfold, characters reinterpret events they experienced earlier or understand them in different ways. All the pieces eventually come together into a full and integrated whole, and the narrative that results has qualities from everything that's happened throughout the story. McAdams thus sees the broad crisis of identity as one that continues to occupy each person throughout life (McAdams, 2001). Of interest is how categories of narrative themes show up in many people's lives. McAdams and his colleagues have found that highly generative midlife adults often report life stories in which they had early advantages, became aware of the suffering of others, established a personal belief system that involved prosocial values, and committed themselves to benefiting society. McAdams calls these commitment stories. Often, these commitment stories also contain redemption themes, in which a bad situation somehow is transformed into something good (McAdams, 2006; McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001). Indeed, the link from the sense of redemption to the quality of generativity appears quite strong (McAdams, 2006). Adults who are low in generativity sometimes have stories involving contamination themes, in which a good situation somehow turns bad. 9.3.12: Linking Erikson's Theory to Other Psychosocial Theories Let's look back to the theories discussed earlier in this chapter to make a final point. Those theories represent contributions of their own. Yet in a sense, the fundamental theme of each is the one reflected in the first crisis in Erikson's theory: basic trust versus basic mistrust. That's a big part of security in attachment. It seems implicit in object relations theories. This issue is also the core of Erikson's own theory, providing the foundation on which the rest of personality is built. Humans seem to need to be able to trust in the relationships that sustain their lives. In the minds of many theorists, that trust is necessary for adequate functioning. People who are deeply mistrustful of relationships or are constantly frightened about possibly losing relationships have lives that are damaged and distorted. The damage may be slight, or it may be major. Avoiding such mistrust and doubt (or recognizing and overcoming it, if it's already there) seems a central task in human existence. 9.4: Assessment from the Psychosocial Perspective 9.4 Identify the two main focuses of assessment from the psychosocial viewpoint Let's turn now to assessment from the psychosocial viewpoint. Two aspects of assessment are specific to this view. 9.4.1: Object Relations, Attachment, and the Focus of Assessment One difference concerns what's being assessed. The psychosocial approach places a greater emphasis than other approaches on assessing the person's orientation to relationships. There are several ways in which a person's mental model of relationships might be assessed. Measures range from some that are open ended in nature (e.g., Blatt, Wein, Chevron, & Quinlan, 1979) to structured self-reports (e.g., Bell, Billington, & Becker, 1986). Some measures assess a range of issues pertaining to relationships (Bell et al., 1986). Others focus specifically on the attachments you have to other people in close relationships (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Collins & Read, 1990; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994; Simpson, 1990). The object relations measure of Bell et al. (1986) is a good illustration of content assessed from this viewpoint. It has four scales. The alienation scale measures a lack of basic trust and an inability to be close. People high on this scale are suspicious, guarded, and isolated, convinced that others will fail them. This resembles avoidant attachment. Another scale measures insecure attachment, which resembles the ambivalent pattern---a sensitivity to rejection and concern about being liked and accepted. The third scale, egocentricity, assesses narcissism, a self-protective and exploitive attitude toward relationships and a tendency to view others only in relation to one's own needs and aims. The final scale measures social incompetence, or shyness and uncertainty about how to engage in even simple social interactions. A different approach to assessment is an open-ended measure by Blatt et al. (1979), which uses a coding system to assess the maturity of people's perceptions of social relations. This measure asks you to describe your mother and father. If you're at a low level of maturity, you tend to focus on how your parents acted to satisfy your needs. If you're at a higher level, your descriptions focus more on your parents' values, thoughts, and feelings apart from your needs. At a very high level, the description takes into account internal contradictions in the parents and changes over time. This measure reflects a person's level of separation and individuation from the parents. 9.4.2: Play in Assessment Another facet of the psychosocial view on assessment reflects its emphasis on childhood experiences as determinants of personality. Because of that, this view deals with child assessment more than others. Assessment of children tends to use play as a tool. It's often said that children's play reveals their preoccupations (e.g., Axline, 1947, 1964; Erikson, 1963; Klein, 1935, 1955a, 1955b). Play lets them express their concerns in ways they can't do in words. Children often reveal their feelings through play. Erikson (1963) devised a play situation using a specific set of toys on a table. The child was to imagine that the table was a movie studio and the toys were actors and sets. The child then created a scene and described what was happening. Other techniques have used less structured settings, but the elements almost always include a variety of dolls (e.g., mother, father, older person, children, baby). This permits children to choose characters that relate to their own concerns or preoccupations. The play situation is projective, because the child imposes a story on ambiguous stimuli. It often has two objective characteristics, however. First is a behavioral record, which includes what the child says about the scene and a description of the scene and the steps taken to create it. Second, the face value of the child's behavior receives more attention than is usual in projective tests. It isn't automatically assumed that the child's behavior has deeply hidden meanings. 9.5: Problems in Behavior, and Behavior Change, from the Psychosocial Perspective 9.5 Explain how psychosocial theorists see problems of narcissism and depression as reflecting difficulties in relationships Given that psychosocial theorists focus on the nature of people's relationships, it's natural that they see problems as reflecting difficulties in relationships. Here are two examples. 9.5.1: Narcissism as a Disorder of Personality One psychosocial view focuses specifically on narcissism as a disorder. Indeed, it was this disorder that provided the starting point for Kohut's work on the self. Pathological narcissism is a sense that everyone and everything is an extension of the self or exists to serve the self. It entails a grandiose sense of self-importance and need for constant attention. Narcissists show a sense of entitlement, of deserving others' adulation. As a result, they often exploit others. Recall that Kohut said everyone begins life with a grandiose narcissism, which is tempered during development. Some people never escape it, however. Kohut (1977) said that inadequate mirroring by parents frustrates the narcissistic needs and prevents formation of an adequate self structure. Kernberg (1976, 1980) said that narcissism arises from parental rejection. The child comes to believe that the only person who can be trusted (and therefore loved) is himself or herself. Fitting this picture, narcissists prefer romantic partners who are admiring over those who offer intimacy (Campbell, 1999). They're also less committed in their relationships---always on the lookout for someone better (Campbell & Foster, 2002). Unmet narcissistic needs can cause a person to distort reality in several ways in an effort to satisfy those needs. For example, narcissistic people are more likely to inflate their judgments of their performances in various arenas of life than are less narcissistic people (John & Robins, 1994). If they're told that someone else has outperformed them, they're more likely to criticize or ridicule that other person (Morf & Rhodewalt, 1993). Narcissists may seem quite agreeable at first, but they wear on other people after a while (Paulhus, 1998). They jump at opportunities for self-enhancement (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). They love to take credit for successes but get angry at failure or criticism (Rhodewalt & Morf, 1998). Indeed, narcissists may erupt in extreme rage if their desires are thwarted (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Stucke & Sporer, 2002) or they experience social rejection (Twenge & Campbell, 2003). This can be a real problem, because they are especially likely to view themselves as victims (McCullough, Emmons, Kilpatrick, & Mooney, 2003). 9.5.2: Attachment and Depression Another window on the nature of problems comes from the idea that interpersonal rejection is an important cause of depression. This idea has a good deal of support (Blatt & Zuroff, 1992). Recall that the avoidant attachment pattern is believed to be produced by neglectful or rejecting parenting, resulting in sadness, despair, and eventual emotional detachment (Carnelley, Pietromonaco, & Jaffe, 1994; Hazan & Shaver, 1994). The avoidant attachment pattern has also been linked to development of emotional distress when under stress (Berant, Mikulincer, & Florian, 2001). Participants were women who had found out two weeks earlier that their newborns had congenital heart disease. Those with avoidant attachment patterns were most distressed at that time and also deteriorated further a year later. Other research also supports the idea that avoidant attachment is a risk factor for depression (Hankin, Kassel, & Abela, 2005; Lee & Hankin, 2009). It's been suggested that both the avoidant attachment pattern and the depression to which it relates can be passed from one generation to another. This suggestion is based on analysis of behavior, however, not genetics. Here's the reasoning: The pattern you acquire as a child is the working model you bring to bear when you have children of your own. If you're an avoidant adult (due to parental rejection) and especially if you're a depressed avoidant adult, what kind of parent will you be? An emotionally distant one. You'll be experienced as a rejecting parent yourself---not because you dislike your child but because you're so distant. Being emotionally unavailable, you may then create an avoidant child---someone just like you. Thus, parents may transfer to the next generation precisely the attachment qualities that made them unhappy themselves. There's support for this line of reasoning regarding rejection and depression (Besser & Priel, 2005; Whitbeck et al., 1992). There's also support regarding an erratic pattern of adult behavior that may be tied to the ambivalent attachment pattern (Elder, Caspi, & Downey, 1986). 9.5.3: Behavior Change People in the psychosocial tradition have also added some techniques to the arsenal of therapy. We noted earlier that interest in development led to the use of play in assessment. In the same way, psychologists such as Erik Erikson (1963), Virginia Axline (1947), and Melanie Klein (1955a, 1955b) developed play therapy techniques for use with children. These techniques give the child the opportunity to do as he or she wishes, without pressuring, intruding, prodding, or nagging. Under these conditions, children can have distance from others (if they're worried about being smothered by a too ever-present parent), or they can play out anger or the wish for closeness (if they're feeling rejected or unwanted). The playroom is the child's world. In it, the child has the chance to bring feelings to the surface, express them, and potentially change working models of relationships and the self in positive ways (Landreth, 1991). Because object relations and self theories emphasize the role of relationships in problems, they also emphasize relationships as part of the therapeutic process. Therapists try to provide the kind of relationship the patient needs so that he or she can reintegrate problematic parts of the self. Healing is fostered by providing the person with a successful experience of narcissism or attachment (almost a kind of re-parenting), replacing the earlier emotional failure. These therapy techniques can be seen as representing a way of restoring to the person's life a sense of connectedness to others. By modifying the representations of relationships that were built in the past, they permit the development of more satisfying relationships in the future. The optimism that this approach holds about being able to undo problematic experiences from the past is reflected in the saying "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." 9.6: Problems and Prospects for the Psychosocial Perspective 9.6 Identify the main strength of psychosocial theories as compared to other viewpoints The psychosocial approach to personality represents many theorists. Although they had different starting points, there's a remarkable consistency in the themes of their work. Each assumes that human relationships are the most important part of life and that how relationships are managed is a core issue in personality. Each tends to assume that people develop working models of relationships in early experience, which then are used to frame new ones. Also implied is the idea that health requires a balance between being ­separate and being closely connected to someone (see also Helgeson, 1994, 2003, 2012; Helgeson & Fritz, 1998). A strength of psychosocial theories is that they point us in directions that other theories don't. Thinking about personality in terms of attachment patterns, for example, suggests hypotheses that aren't readily derived from other viewpoints. Work based in attachment theory is leading to a better understanding of how personality plays out in social relations. The picture of this aspect of personality would very likely not have emerged without having the attachment model as a starting point. Furthermore, linking the themes of attachment to theories of greater complexity, such as Erikson's, creates a picture of change and evolution across the life span that would be nearly impossible to derive from other viewpoints. The psychosocial viewpoint clearly adds something of great importance to our understanding of personality. This isn't to say that the psychosocial approach has no unresolved issues. One important issue concerns a clash between this view and the views of trait psychologists and behavior geneticists. Adult attachment patterns correspond well to genetically influenced traits. Avoidants are like introverts, secures like extraverts, and anxious--ambivalents like people high in neuroticism. Do these patterns result from parenting, or are they genetically determined? There are strong opinions on both sides of this question. It's a question that will surely continue to be examined closely. In considering the prospects of this viewpoint for the future, we should note that research on psychosocial approaches is continuing rapidly. Indeed, adult attachment and related ideas represent one of the more active areas of research in personality psychology today, and the recent flood of research on this topic shows no sign of abating (Cassidy & Shaver, in press; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Rholes & Simpson, 2004; Simpson & Rholes, 2015). Research on the implications of attachment patterns for the life of the child---and the adult---promises to yield interesting new insights into the human experience. The prospects of this area of work seem very bright, as do the prospects for the approach more generally. Summary: Psychosocial Theories Psychosocial theories emphasize the idea that personality is intrinsically social and that the important issues of ­personality concern how people relate to others. Several psychosocial theories focus on early life. Mahler's object relations theory proposes that infants are psychologically merged with their mothers and that they separate and individuate during the first three years of life. How this takes place influences later adjustment. Kohut's self psychology resembles object relations theory. He said humans have narcissistic needs that are satisfied by other people, represented as selfobjects. If the child receives enough mirroring (positive attention) from selfobjects (chiefly, the mother), his or her sense of self develops appropriately. If there's too much mirroring, the child won't be able to deal with frustrations. If there's too little, the development of the self will be stunted. Some of these ideas are echoed in the work of attachment theorists, such as Bowlby and Ainsworth. Secure attachment provides a solid base for exploration. There are also patterns of insecure attachment (ambivalent and avoidant), which stem from inconsistent treatment, neglect, or rejection. There's increasing interest in the idea that infant attachment patterns persist and influence adult personality. A great deal of work is currently being done on this topic, assessing adult attachment in several ways. Although people do display diverse ways of relating across their social connections, a core tendency seems to exist. Adult attachment patterns influence many aspects of behavior, including how people relate to work activities, how they seek and give emotional support, and how they relate to romantic partners. Another important theory of the psychosocial group is Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. Erikson postulated a series of crises from infancy to late adulthood, giving rise to ego strengths that influence one's ego identity: the consciously experienced sense of self. Erikson assumed that each crisis becomes focal at one stage but that each is present in a less obvious form throughout life. The first crisis concerns the development of a sense of basic trust. The child then becomes concerned with control over its body and the sense of autonomy that comes with that. The next issue is initiative, as the child seeks to exercise its power. As the child enters the school years, he or she begins to realize that the social environment demands being industrious. With adolescence, the child enters a new stage of life and has a crisis over identity. In young adulthood, identity issues give way to concern over intimacy. In adulthood, the person's concern is over generativity. Finally, in the last stage of life, the individual confronts the integrity of life as a whole. Assessment techniques from the psychosocial view are similar to those of ego psychology but focus more on relationships. This approach also leads to use of play for assessment with children. The psychosocial view of problems focuses on the idea that problems are rooted in relationship issues. Kohut suggested that pathological narcissism stems from inadequate childhood mirroring. Insecure attachment seems to create a risk for depression. These theories approach therapy in ways similar to those of ego psychology, but there are additional variations. One of them is play therapy for children. Object ­relations and attachment theories also suggest that a relationship with a therapist is critical in permitting reintegration of the sense of self or establishing a sense of secure attachment.