Positive Adult Development

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Positive Adult Development is one of the four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified. The other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Positive adult developmental processes are divided into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (orders, stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.

The achievement of complete development at the end of adolescence was suggested by Freud, Piaget, and Binet among others. Research in Positive Adult Development questions not only that development ceases after adolescence, but also the notion of decline after late adolescence postulated by many gerontologists. Positive development does occur during adulthood. Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health, life satisfaction, and degree of contribution to the society.

Development of the Field

Origins of the field

This field stems originally from several threads of work within Psychology. For example, Erik Erikson (1978) proposed a number of adult periods. Daniel Levinson (1978) had described a number of "seasons of life." Abraham Maslow proposed an adult needs hierarchy. Jean Piaget (Vuyk, 1980) came to agree that there were adult postformal stages beyond the stage of formal operations; his earlier theory had located an endpoint to the development of cognitive structures in the adolescent's acquisition of formal operations. John L. Horn (1970, 1979) found that crystallized intelligence, represented by such things as vocabulary size, increased in adulthood. Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) found that in early adulthood, some people come to think of moral, ethical and societal issues in multivarate terms (Systematic stage 11, the first postformal stage). They use multiple relations. During middle adulthood some people become principled reasoners about moral issues; for instance, they used abstract principles to relate systems of rights to systems of duties (Metasystematic stage 12, the second postformal stage). Likewise, Cheryl Armon (1984) found that by middle adulthood, some people could reason about interpersonal relationships at an order of complexity similar to that described by Lawrence Kohlberg.

Intermediate Work

By 1978, research on positive adult development was growing at an extraordinary rate, and expanding upon these early threads in a number of directions. Summaries of some of that initial positive adult development research can be found in Commons, Richards, and Armon (1984), as well as in Alexander and Langer (1990). Four postformal adult stages of development beyond the formal stage have been discovered in a wide variety of domains. The total number of stages across the life span now stands at 15. Periods and Seasons have been described.

There were a number of edited books in the period around 1990. These include edited books (Commons, Sinnott, Richards, & Armon, 1989 and Commons, Armon, Kohlberg, Richards, Grotzer, & Sinnott, 1990).

Recent Work

Now that such substantive bodies of knowledge are accruing about positive adult development (Demick & Andreoletti, 2002; Hoare, 2006), some researchers have turned to investigating methods to foster such development, rather than just describe it and/or measure it. For educators of adults in formal settings, this has been on the educational agenda in various forms already. More recently, efforts branched out to testing hypotheses about fostering positive adult development. These methods are used in organizational and educational setting. Some use developmentally-designed, structured public discourse to address complex public issues (Ross, 2007).

Measurements in Positive Adult Development

Researchers have developed a number of instruments and methods to measure adult development. Most of these focus on one aspect, e.g., moral development of Kohlberg, emotional development of Erik Erikson, etc. One measurement that can be used in any domain of activity is the Model of Hierarchical Complexity.

References

• Armon, C. (1984). Ideals of the good life and moral judgment: Ethical reasoning across the. lifespan. In M. L. Commons, F.A. Richards, & C. Armon (Eds.), Beyond formal operations: Vol. I. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. New York: Praeger.
• Commons, M. L., Armon, C., Kohlberg, L., Richards, F. A., Grotzer, T. A., & Sinnott, J. D. (Eds.). (1990). Adult development: Vol. 2. Models and methods in the study of adolescent and adult thought. New York: Praeger.
• Commons, M. L., Richards, F. A., & Armon, C. (Eds.). (1984). Beyond formal operations: Vol. I. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. New York: Praeger.
• Commons, M. L., Sinnott, J. D., Richards, F. A., & Armon, C. (Eds.). (1989). Adult development: Vol. 1. Comparisons and applications of adolescent and adult developmental models. New York: Praeger.
• Alexander, C., & Langer, E. (Eds.). (1990). Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Demick, J., & Andreoletti (Eds.).(2003). Handbook of adult development. New Jersey, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Erikson, E. H. (1978). Adulthood. New York: W. W. Norton
• Gidley, J. M. The Evolution of Consciousness as a Planetary Imperative: An Integration of Integral Views, Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Research and Praxis, 2007, Issue 5, p. 4-226.
• Hoare, C. (Ed.). (2006). Handbook of adult development and learning. New York, NY: Oxford.
• Horn, J. L. (1970). Organization of data on life-span development of human abilities. In L. R. Goulet & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), Life-span developmental psychology: Research and theory (pp. 423–466). New York: Academic Press.
• Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Essays on moral development. San Francisco: Harper & Row
• Levinson, D. J. (1978). Seasons of a man's life. New York: Knopf.
• Ross, S. N. (2007). Effects of a structured public issues discourse method on the complexity of citizens' reasoning and local political development. Dissertation Abstracts International B, 68 (02). (UMI No. 3251492).
• Vuyk, R. (1981). Overview and critique of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology. 1965-1980, 2. Volumes, Academic, New York.