Assess whether Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development are scientific. (8)

Question 1

Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development have eight different stages going from birth to old age.

Answer 1

Erikson’s theory covers all of the human lifespan in terms of psychological and social development making it harder to isolate one variable, making it less scientific.

Question 2

Each stage has a crisis that has to be resolved at a certain age, e.g. intimacy vs. isolation between the ages of 18 and 40 years old.

Answer 2

Erikson’s theory can be falsified in terms of ages and the stages, so making it scientific.

Question 3

If a crisis is not successfully resolved, then the person may have problems later on in life.

Answer 3

Malone et al. (2016) found that those who did not successfully resolve the crisis at stage 7 were more likely to have depression when aged 75 to 85 years old so giving scientific evidence to support the theory.

Question 4

Erikson’s fifth stage is identity vs. identity confusion where adolescents create a stable view of who and what they are.

Answer 4

Erikson used interviews to determine which stages people were in such as identity versus identity confusion, which collected subjective qualitative data, therefore reducing the scientific status of the theory.