2.0

• Ø  EXPERTISE – because it takes so long to attain, expertise often shows up more in middle adulthood than in early adulthood.
• Ø  PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING – ability to solve such practical problems improved through the forties and fifties as individuals accumulated practical experience.
• Ø  RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY AND MEANING IN LIFE – can religion distinguished from spirituality? PAMELA KING AND HER COLLEAGUES (2011) provide the following distinctions:
• -          RELIGION – an organized set of beliefs, practices, rituals, and symbols that increases an individual’s connection to a sacred or transcendent other.
• -          RELIGIOUNESS – refers to the degree of affiliation with an organized religion, participation in its prescribed rituals and practices connection with its beliefs and involvement in a community of believers.
• -          SPIRITUALITY – involves experiencing something beyond oneself in a transcendent manner and living in a way that benefits other.
• -          Some CULTS AND RELIGIOUS SECTS encourage behaviors that can be damaging to health, such as ignoring sound medical advice.
• -          For individuals in the RELIGIOUS MANSTREAM researchers increasingly are finding that spirituality/religion is positively linked to health.
• -          VICTOR FRANKL said that the 3 most distinct human qualities are SPIRITUALITY, FREEDOM, AND RESPONSIBILITY.
• -          Having a SENSE OF MEANING LIFE can lead to clearer guidelines for living one’s life and enhanced motivation to take care of oneself and reach goals.
• -          ROY BAUMEISTER AND KATHLEEN VOHS argue that this quest can be understood in term of four mains needs for meaning that guide how people try to make sense of their lives: NEED FOR PURPOSE, VALUES, SENSE OF EFFICACY, AND SELF-ESTEEM.
• -          GENERATIVITY – encompasses adult’s desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation, achieving some kind of immortality.
• -          STAGNATION – (sometimes called self-absorption”) develops when individuals sense that they have done nothing for the next generation.
• -          LEVINSON’S SEASONS OF A MAN’S LIFE – the transition to middle adulthood lasts about 5 years (40 to 45) and requires the adult to come to grips with four major conflicts that have existed in his life since adolescence:
• what are the 4 major conflicts that middle adulthood had exist since in adolescence

  1.       Being young versus being old

  2.       Being destructive versus constructive

  3.       Being masculine versus being feminine

  4.       Being attached to others versus being separated from them.
• Ø  LIFE EVENTS APPROACH

  -          Life events were viewed as taxing circumstances for individuals, forcing them to change their personality.
• -          In CONTEMPORARY LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH, life events influence the individual’s development depends together with mediating factors.
• -          Events such as the death of a spouse, divorce, and marriage, were believed to involved VARYING DEGREE OF STRESS, and therefore likely to influence the individual’s development.
• -          COSTA AND MCCRAE BALTIMORE STUDIES – concluded that considerable stability occurs in the 5 personality factors- emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness
• Ø  BERKELEY LONGITUDINAL STUDIES

  The results from early adolescence through a portion of middle did not support either extreme in the debate over whether personality is characterized by stability or change.