Chapter 8 - Textbook

Question 1

A higher level of generativity is related to what two things?

Answer 1

Greater well-being and greater personal growth

Question 2

Describe the average state of wellbeing over a person’s lifespan

Answer 2

Well-being relatively high at younger ages
• Well-being decreases in midlife and rises
again after 60
• Major factors influencing the dip at midlife
• Midlife creates many frustrated achievers

Question 3

The middle-aged brain may be less quick, but more ____

Answer 3

shrewd

Question 4

Older persons are ___ satisfied with life

Answer 4

more

Question 5

Describe non-normative life events

Answer 5

Unexpected life challenges, such as an illness or financial crisis

Question 6

Describe normative life events

Answer 6

Launching a career, marriage, becoming a parent or grandparent, and
retirement

Question 7

Describe assimilation and give an example

Answer 7

Adjustments that use assimilation allow us to keep striving without major
alterations in goals, assumptions, or our sense of identity. For instance, the
goal of becoming a world-famous chef does not have to be abandoned when
one’s first child is born, but how that goal is pursued will certainly need to
be altered to fit the new role of parent.

Question 8

Describe accommodation and give an example

Answer 8

Adjustments that use
accommodation require us to change goals, assumptions, or identities
because the old ones are no longer workable. For example, after the
paralysis of his left hand, Robert Schumann was forced to abandon his
desire to be a concert pianist. Luckily for the world, he created a new life
for himself as a composer

Question 9

Define ego resiliency

Answer 9

The ability to adapt flexibly to challenges and restore a sense of positive
well-being

Question 10

Define generativity

Answer 10

The responsibility for each generation of adults to bear, nurture, and guide those
people who will succeed them as adults, as well as to develop and maintain
those societal institutions and natural resources without which successive
generations will not be able to survive

Question 11

McAdams and colleagues found that the identities of highly generative people, as revealed through their life stories, were often partially constructed with a _______

Answer 11

commitment script

Question 12

Define positive youth development

Answer 12

The idea that youth possess resources that can be developed, nurtured, and cultivated.

Question 13

Richard Lerner (2009) presented positive youth development as a process
that fosters the “Five C’s”. What are they?

Answer 13

Competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring

Question 14

Give examples of developmental assets

Answer 14

Churches, YMCA or activity centers, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, 4-H Clubs, and
colleges and universities.

Question 15

Terms such as successful aging, aging well, and positive aging capture what idea?

Answer 15

That being older can be one of the most exciting and invigorating times of life

Question 16

Describe the positivity effect

Answer 16

The positivity ratio for older persons increases because negative emotionality goes down

Question 17

Define temporal realism

Answer 17

The ability of people to accurately recall their well-being in the past and to predict their future well-being

Question 18

Describe Baltes’s model of selective

optimization with compensation

Answer 18

The idea that optimal adjustment to
aging was accomplished by accepting that certain capacities decline with
age and finding ways to compensate for those inevitable losses. By such
self-acceptance, one can retain optimum enjoyment from activities that give
a sense of satisfaction.

Question 19

Describe Carstensen’s theory of socioemotional selectivity

Answer 19

The idea that basic psychological goals, such as the development of a positive self-concept or the regulation of emotion, remain throughout the life span, but their salience changes depending on one’s place in the life cycle.
Specifically, she contended that the drives to seek out information and to develop a positive self-concept are most important during adolescence and become less important with age.

Question 20

Describe the value-as-moderator model of subjective well-being proposed by Oishi, Diener, Suh, and Lucas (1999)

Answer 20

It predicts that shifting values across the life span predict shifts in how well-being is
calculated based on those values.

Question 21

Labouvie-Vief and Medler assumed that people regulate their emotions by using primarily what two strategies?

Answer 21

Affect optimization and affect complexity

Question 22

Define affect optimization according to Labouvie-Vief and Medler

Answer 22

Attempts to maximize positive emotions and dampen negative emotions

Question 23

Define affect complexity according to Labouvie-Vief and Medler

Answer 23

Attempts to coordinate positive and negative emotions into cognitive-emotional schemas (i.e., organizational structures) that are both flexible and integrated

Question 24

Labouvie-Vief and Medler found four groups that each used a different emotional regulation style, what were they?

Answer 24

Integrated group, defended group, complex group, and dysregulated group

Question 25

Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s integrated group

Answer 25

Emphasized positive emotions and
emotional complexity.
However, people in this group had only moderately high levels of self-complexity, and the use of certain defense mechanisms seemed to indicate some distortion of reality in order to maintain their positive emotions

Question 26

Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s defended group

Answer 26

Emphasized positive emotions but scored low on affect complexity and had a somewhat underdeveloped sense of self. This group seemed to use stronger defense
mechanisms to maintain positive emotions.

Question 27

Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s complex group

Answer 27

Tended to have only moderate levels of
positive emotions but high levels of emotional complexity (i.e., blended
patterns of both positive and negative emotions) and a highly complex sense
of self.
The lower scores for defensiveness in the group appeared to indicate greater openness to experiences, even if experiences involved negative emotions

Question 28

Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s dysregulated group

Answer 28

Scored low on both positive emotions and emotional complexity and were clearly having emotional difficulties.

Question 29

Describe coherent positive resolution and give an example

Answer 29

Involves the creation of a narrative about a difficult event that has a positive
ending and conveys a sense of emotional resolution and closure.
For instance, someone might say, “Yes, it was difficult growing up with an
alcoholic father, but I learned to be independent and to build my own sense
of self-worth.”

Question 30

Describe exploratory narrative

processing

Answer 30

Involves a willingness to fully understand a difficult situation and to analyze it with openness and full recognition of the negative emotional impact the event had on one’s life. This process leads to greater
depth and more complexity to a person’s understanding of life events.
For instance, high exploratory processing might be indicated by someone who
said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t feel the pain of the loss. But I know that people get sick and die. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the cycle of life and we need to accept it.”

Question 31

A frequent theme in American stories involves a redemptive sequence; describe it and give examples

Answer 31

A difficult or challenging experience is
transformed by the person’s own active intervention, creating a change in
the self that becomes the focal point of the story.
The old Horatio Alger stories of individual success in America are examples of the redemptive sequence. One study found that narratives Americans wrote after the 9/11 terrorist attack contained redemptive themes along with coherent positive
resolution

Question 32

Describe age identity

Answer 32

How old we feel, rather than our chronological age

Question 33

How did Christopher Davis and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema describe benefit finding?

Answer 33

Common but potentially transient adjustments to adversity.
These often take the form of positive interpretations of setbacks that place the event in a different light, that is, proverbially seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty.

Question 34

How did Christopher Davis and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema describe posttraumatic growth?

Answer 34

Significant changes in life goals and life commitments that require major
alterations in one’s sense of identity or life narrative.
This approach views adaptation as eventually leading to improved mental health

Question 35

Define resilience

Answer 35

A pattern of positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity or risk

Question 36

Arnett specified five features as distinct (although not unique) to emerging
adulthood, what were they?

Answer 36

Identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and possibilities or optimism.

Question 37

Praise for a child’s intelligence is praise for a fixed skill or ability that might be lost in the future. What mindset could this cause in a child?

Answer 37

A fixed mindset

Question 38

Define a growth mindset

Answer 38

When children believe that their
talents and abilities can be developed through dedication, persistence, and
passionate commitment

Question 39

Describe posttraumatic growth

Answer 39

When a traumatic event is such that it requires both assimilation and
accommodation and the result is an adaptation that enhances flourishing and
elevates a person to a higher level of psychosocial functioning and wellbeing

Question 40

Researchers interested in resilience and stress should adopt a ______ orientation that examines how to enhance an active,
exploratory, and variety-seeking perspective on life

Answer 40

salutogenic

Question 41

Describe Antonovsky’s sense of coherence model

Answer 41

A unique set of personality traits that
creates an orientation to life allowing people to interpret life stressors in a
positive and adaptive way, that is, as coherent and understandable despite
adversity

Question 42

For Antonovsky, a sense of coherence comprises what three major factors?

Answer 42

Meaningfulness, comprehensibility, and manageability

Question 43

Vaillant classified defense mechanisms on a continuum from extreme to
mild, based on the degree of unconsciousness and involuntariness involved. What were the classifications?

Answer 43

Psychotic, immature, neurotic, and mature or adaptive styles

Question 44

The mature or adaptive defense mechanisms Vaillant identified were:

Answer 44

Altruism, anticipation, humor, sublimation, and suppression.