Development in adulthood

Question 1

Main periods of adulthood

Answer 1

• Early adulthood (18-40 years)
• Emerging adulthood (18-29 years?)
  – Middle adulthood (middle age/midlife) (40-65 years)
  – Late adulthood (old age) (65+)

Question 2

Does anything develop after we reach age of majority

Answer 2

Things certainly change – but change ≠ development
– Development = change that constitutes improvement or
advancement, and is organized systematically (order/structure)

Question 3

How does practiced activities deteriorate over time

Answer 3

“use it or loose it” principle: highly practiced skills may be
maintained very well, while unpracticed skills will deteriorate with age

Question 4

What is Life satisfaction

Answer 4

Life satisfaction: the distinction between hedonic happiness (experience of pleasure) and eudaimonic happiness (experience of meaning and purpose)

Question 5

Does our personality change over time?

Answer 5

– Individual differences in personality (i.e. differences between people) are fairly stable over adult years
– Still, there is some systematic drift in personality traits over the life course (i.e. changes within person)

Question 6

What is emotion regulation?

Answer 6

• Ability to manage (cope with) difficult emotional experiences
  – A variety of conscious (deliberate) and unconscious strategies

Question 7

How does intelligence change over time

Answer 7

Crystallized intelligence: it stays the same (or even improves slightly) until middle age, starts declining in late 60-ies.

Fluid intelligence: the story depends on whether your you compare
your performance against that of other people younger than you (cross- sectional data, panel a) or against your own younger self (longitudinal data, panel b)