Chapter 8 - Textbook Flashcards
A higher level of generativity is related to what two things?
Greater well-being and greater personal growth
Describe the average state of wellbeing over a person’s lifespan
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
The middle-aged brain may be less quick, but more ____
shrewd
Older persons are ___ satisfied with life
more
Describe non-normative life events
Unexpected life challenges, such as an illness or financial crisis
Describe normative life events
Launching a career, marriage, becoming a parent or grandparent, and
retirement
Describe assimilation and give an example
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.
Describe accommodation and give an example
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
Define ego resiliency
The ability to adapt flexibly to challenges and restore a sense of positive
well-being
Define generativity
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
McAdams and colleagues found that the identities of highly generative people, as revealed through their life stories, were often partially constructed with a _______
commitment script
Define positive youth development
The idea that youth possess resources that can be developed, nurtured, and cultivated.
Richard Lerner (2009) presented positive youth development as a process that fosters the “Five C’s”. What are they?
Competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring
Give examples of developmental assets
Churches, YMCA or activity centers, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, 4-H Clubs, and
colleges and universities.
Terms such as successful aging, aging well, and positive aging capture what idea?
That being older can be one of the most exciting and invigorating times of life
Describe the positivity effect
The positivity ratio for older persons increases because negative emotionality goes down
Define temporal realism
The ability of people to accurately recall their well-being in the past and to predict their future well-being
Describe Baltes’s model of selective
optimization with compensation
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.
Describe Carstensen’s theory of socioemotional selectivity
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.
Describe the value-as-moderator model of subjective well-being proposed by Oishi, Diener, Suh, and Lucas (1999)
It predicts that shifting values across the life span predict shifts in how well-being is
calculated based on those values.
Labouvie-Vief and Medler assumed that people regulate their emotions by using primarily what two strategies?
Affect optimization and affect complexity
Define affect optimization according to Labouvie-Vief and Medler
Attempts to maximize positive emotions and dampen negative emotions
Define affect complexity according to Labouvie-Vief and Medler
Attempts to coordinate positive and negative emotions into cognitive-emotional schemas (i.e., organizational structures) that are both flexible and integrated
Labouvie-Vief and Medler found four groups that each used a different emotional regulation style, what were they?
Integrated group, defended group, complex group, and dysregulated group
Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s integrated group
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
Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s defended group
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.
Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s complex group
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
Describe Labouvie-Vief and Medler’s dysregulated group
Scored low on both positive emotions and emotional complexity and were clearly having emotional difficulties.
Describe coherent positive resolution and give an example
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.”
Describe exploratory narrative
processing
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.”
A frequent theme in American stories involves a redemptive sequence; describe it and give examples
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
Describe age identity
How old we feel, rather than our chronological age
How did Christopher Davis and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema describe benefit finding?
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.
How did Christopher Davis and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema describe posttraumatic growth?
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
Define resilience
A pattern of positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity or risk
Arnett specified five features as distinct (although not unique) to emerging
adulthood, what were they?
Identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and possibilities or optimism.
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?
A fixed mindset
Define a growth mindset
When children believe that their
talents and abilities can be developed through dedication, persistence, and
passionate commitment
Describe posttraumatic growth
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
Researchers interested in resilience and stress should adopt a ______ orientation that examines how to enhance an active,
exploratory, and variety-seeking perspective on life
salutogenic
Describe Antonovsky’s sense of coherence model
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
For Antonovsky, a sense of coherence comprises what three major factors?
Meaningfulness, comprehensibility, and manageability
Vaillant classified defense mechanisms on a continuum from extreme to
mild, based on the degree of unconsciousness and involuntariness involved. What were the classifications?
Psychotic, immature, neurotic, and mature or adaptive styles
The mature or adaptive defense mechanisms Vaillant identified were:
Altruism, anticipation, humor, sublimation, and suppression.
