Personality and paths to successful development: an overview Lea Pulkkinen and Avshalom Caspi Research traditions in developmental psychology vary with respect to how much emphasis they give to successful development. Historically, most studies of personality development have been biased by the goal of seeking to understand maladjustment and behavioral problems, such as anxiety or aggression, and have tended to overlook the study of pathways to successful outcomes. Whereas the study of problem behavior is clearly oriented toward predicting, explaining, and preventing social and clinical problems, the study of successful development is made more difficult because the end point (success) is more elusive and thus more difficult to operationalize and to promote. To study successful personality development one must first have a way of thinking about the course of lives and a way of assessing how adap- tational processes are patterned over time. We can identify three general approachestothisconceptualproblem:growthmodels,life-spanmodels, and life-course models. Each of these social-developmental approaches provides a framework for understanding adaptational processes and the coherence of personality development by focusing on the distinctive ways individuals organize their behavior to meet new environmental demands and developmental challenges. Growthandstagemodels Growthmodelsofpersonalitydevelopmentarenothomogeneousintheir orientation, but are based on different traditions and conceptual back- grounds. For example, humanistic theories of personality development are best known for emphasizing the potential for positive development. People can take charge of their lives and direct them toward creativity and self-actualization which involves self-fulfillment and the realization of one’s potential (Maslow, 1954). In contrast, psychoanalytically ori- ented models tend to emphasize the growth of ego through age stages. Integrity is the goal of successful development in Erikson’s (1950) the- ory,aswellasinLoevinger’s(1997)modelofegodevelopmentandinthe 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 052180048X - Paths to Successful Development: Personality in the Life Course Edited by Lea Pulkkinen and Avshalom Caspi Excerpt More information