Life-Span Developmental Psychology. Personality and Socialization

446 Pages·1973·5.73 MB·English

by  Paul B. Baltes and K Warner Schaie (Eds.)

CONTRIBUTORS
INGE M. AHAMMER SAMUEL Z. KLAUSNER
PAUL B. BALTES NATHAN KOGAN
VERN L. BENGTSON LAWRENCE KOHLBERG
JAMES E. BIRREN JACQUES LEMPERS
K. DEAN BLACK NORMAN LIVSON
NANCY DATAN WILLIAM R. LOOFT
WALTER EMMERICH ANNE H. NARDI
DWIGHT HARSHBARGER BERNICE L. NEUGARTEN
WILLARD W. HARTUP K. WARNER SCHAIE
ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST DIANA S. WOODRUFF
LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
PERSONALITY AND SOCIALIZATION
Edited by
PAUL B. BALTES and K. WARNER SCHAIE
College of Human Development Department of Psychology
Pennsylvania State University West Virginia University
University Park, Pennsylvania Morgantown, West Virginia
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Life-span developmental psychology.
Proceedings of the 3rd of a series of meetings;
proceedings of the 1st are entered under title: Life-
span developmental psychology: research and theory;
proceedings of the 2nd are entered under: Life-Span
Conference, 2nd, West Virginia University, 1 9 7 1 .
Bibliography: p.
1. Developmental psychology-Congresses.
2. Personality-Congresses. 3. Social izat ion-
Congresses. I. Baltes, Paul B., ed. II. Schaie,
Klaus Warner, Date ed.
BF712.L54 15 7 3 - 7 9 7
ISBN 0 - 1 2 - 0 7 . 7 1 5 0 - 0
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
84 85 86 87 9 8 7 6
List of Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors* contributions begin.
INGE M. AHAMMER* (253), Division of Developmental Psychology, Catholic
University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
PAUL B. BALTES (365), College of Human Development, Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, Pennsylvania
VERN L. BENGTSON (207), Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, Uni-
versity of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
JAMES E. BIRREN (305), Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, Uni-
versity of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
K. DEAN BLACK (207), Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
NANCY DAT AN t (53), Division of Behavioral Sciences, University of the
Negev, Be'er-Sheva, Israel
WALTER EMMERICH (123), Human Development Research Group, Educa-
tional Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey
DWIGHT HARSHBARGER (339), Department of Psychology, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, West Virginia
WILLARD W. HARTUP (235), Institute of Child Development, University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
*Present address: School of Behavioural Sciences. Macquarie University, North Ryde, N.S.W.,
Australia.
tPresent address: Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West
Virginia.
xi
xii List of Contributors
ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST (1), Department of Education, The University of
Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
SAMUEL Z. KLAUSNER (71), Department of Sociology, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
NATHAN KOGAN (145), Department of Psychology, New School for Social
Research, New York, New York
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG (179), Graduate School of Education, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
JACQUES LEMPERS (235), Institute of Child Development, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
NORMAN LIVSON (97), Institute of Human Development, University of
California, Berkeley, California, and Department of Psychology, California
State University, Hay ward, California
WILLIAM R. LOOFT (25), College of Human Development, Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
ANNE H. NARDI (285), Department of Educational Psychology, West Vir-
ginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia
BERNICE L. NEUGARTEN (53), Committee on Human Development, The
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
K. WARNER SCHAIE* (365), Department of Psychology, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, West Virginia
DIANA S. WOODRUFFt (305), Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
•Present address: Ethel Percy Gerontology Center, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, California.
tPresent address: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California.
Preface
The subject matter of an emerging field, life-span developmental psychology,
has been the focus of three West Virginia Conferences which were held in 1969,
1971, and 1972 under the auspices of the Department of Psychology at West
Virginia University. Whereas the first two conference volumes dealt with a
review of life-span theory, methodology, and basic psychological processes, the
current volume addresses the area of socialization and personality. Historically
speaking, the selection of this topic as the focus for a third conference may seem
out of chronological order, since it is the area of personality and socialization that
was largely at the core of initial life-span developmental theorizing and research.
Nevertheless, it is gratifying to see, in this volume, a larger contribution by and
tribute to those who pioneered a life-span approach to the study of psychological
ontogeny. It is testimony to their scientific posture that the present effort yields an
impressive array of empirical and theoretical contributions.
It is our hope that this volume will be more than a vehicle for disseminating
knowledge. Rather, we trust that it will provide an incentive for the generation of
research and the continuous development of more useful theoretical conceptions
in the area of human development. At the present moment, in accord with a
descriptive life-span view of development, we can only say that time, distance,
and death alone will crystallize issues. In the meantime, it is you, the reader, who
will judge the success of our efforts by your actions which will lead either to
acceleration, deceleration, or modification of the course and the life span of
life-span developmental psychology.
In any case, we eagerly anticipate your vigorous response.
xiii
Acknowledgments
The editors are grateful to the sponsoring institution, West Virginia University,
and especially to Dr. Ray Koppelman, Provost for Research and Graduate
Affairs, who so ably carried the burden of administrative risk taking. The
assistance of many others associated with West Virginia University and its
doctoral program in life-span developmental psychology and the College of
Human Development at The Pennsylvania State University, where most of the
editorial work was carried out, must also be acknowledged. In a real sense, a host
of current and former West Virginia and Pennsylvania State graduate students
(William Arnold, Elizabeth M. Barton, Thomas W. Bartsch, William Birkhill,
Dana Cable, Wanda Franz, Joseph M. Fitzgerald, Edward Forbes, John Friel,
Carol Furry, Frances Hoyer, William Hoyer, Rudolph A. Kafer, Erich W. La-
bouvie, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Leighton Stamps, Richard Swanson, and others)
were collaborating conference organizers and amiable hosts. They gave their time
generously in working with us to make the conference an intellectual and social
success. Finally, without the secretarial skills of Mary Kutac and Pamela Evans,
and especially the diligent and painstaking work of our able editorial assistant,
Elizabeth M. Barton, this volume would not have been completed on schedule
and with minimal frustration for the contributors and editors. We gratefully
acknowledge our vast indebtedness to all of them.
As to the contributors to this volume, we thank them not only for their scholarly
products, but also for their warm, cooperative, and challenging spirit that made it
not only enjoyable and edifying to work with them, but also easy to form a number
of precious new friendships and to further develop already existing ones. We hold
them in high esteem.
xv
CHAPTER
History of Developmental Psychology:
Socialization and Personality Development
through the Life Span
ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
ABSTRACT
There was no explicit developmental psychology of personality through the life span before
the middle of the twentieth century. Prior to 1940, psychologists studying personality
generally confined themselves to a limited segment of the life span. The period from 1850
to 1920 saw a good deal of empirical study of child and adolescent development, but almost
no attention to adulthood and later maturity. After 1930, a small number of leaders
emerged with an interest in life-span development: Charlotte B'uhler, Else Frenkel-Bruns-
wik, Erik Erikson, and Hans Thomae. Also, the University of Chicago Committee on
Human Development directed its resources into the study of personality development in
middle and old age.
Theories of personality which did not prove useful for understanding life-span develop-
ment were constitutional types, nineteenth century evolutionary theory (G. S. Hall), and
psychoanalytic theory. Since 1930, several longitudinal studies of personality development
have been producing useful data and theories. Other useful sources are biographies, auto-
biographies, and systematic case studies. The development of life-span theory probably
requires: an organismic theory of personality, which assumes an active organism inter-
3
4 Robert J. Havighurst
acting with the social and physical environment; attention to physical vigor and health as
a causal factor; study of career changes and other crises of middle age; and study of the
perceptions of aging by the self and the wider community.
I. Introduction
There was no explicit developmental psychology of personality through the
life span before the middle of the twentieth century. That is, there was no
systematic set of psychological data concerning even half of anyone's life span,
and there were no tested theories or models of psychological development cover-
ing this much of the human life cycle.
A number of questions about personality development throughout life had
been asked and there were some speculative answers to these questions. Some
of these basic questions were: (1) Is personality related to the physique—the
biological make-up of the individual? (2) Are the principal behavior patterns
determined genetically for the individual? (3) To what extent is there a
quasi-universal life course for humans that can be described in terms of per-
sonality development? (4) To what extent and in what ways can personality be
changed after the end of adolescence? (5) How is human personality modified as
the individual progresses through the life span?
Though these questions were discussed, from time to time, in a largely
speculative way, or in dogmatic terms, they did not get serious, sustained scientific
attention prior to the twentieth century.
A. Definition of the Topic of This Paper
This chapter deals with one aspect of human life-span developmental
psychology. The broader field has been defined by Baltes and Goulet (1970)
as follows: "Human life-span developmental psychology is concerned with the
description and explication of ontogenetic (age-related) behavioral changes from
birth to death [p. 1 2 ] . "
The aspect of focus here is personality development and the socialization
processes that influence personality. Thus, we are not concerned directly with
several major areas of psychological development—intelligence, learning,
psychomotor development, sensory development, or occupational development.
Within the field of personality and socialization, we are especially concerned
1
with the adult period, since this is a relatively neglected area. Baltes and Goulet
^h i s chapter depends heavily on two papers prepared for an earlier symposium and published
in the book entitled Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Research and Theory edited by Baltes and
Goulet. The papers are: "Historical Antecedents of Life-Span Developmental Psychology" by
Charles (1970), and "Life-Span Developmental Psychology in Europe" by Groffmann (1970). It is
assumed that the reader has access to these papers. The focus of this paper, therefore, has been nar-
rowed from developmental psychology in general to the subject of personality development.
History of Developmental Psychology: Socialization and Personality Development 5
(1970) point this out when they say that a major objective of life-span developmen-
tal psychology is the
integrative conceptualization of the totality of ontogenetic behavioral c h a n g e s . . . the bulk of
research efforts in developmental psychology has been conducted thus far by researchers
whose primary orientation was toward specific age periods such as infancy, etc., without any
comprehensive attempts to integrate the findings within the framework of the life span. As a
consequence, and with few exceptions, these age-specific research efforts have remained
fairly insular and uncoordinated, even though they appear to be intrinsically related through
their common goal, the study of age-related behavioral change [p. 13] .
B. Trends before 1920
Developmental studies of infancy, childhood, and adolescence originated in
the nineteenth century and were flourishing by 1940, when studies of adulthood
and aging were just getting started. Some of the people who worked with the
earlier stages of development became interested in adulthood and aging, but
they did not do serious research at these levels. For example, G. Stanley Hall,
who published his influential book on Adolescence in 1904, after his formal
retirement wrote his book on Senescence: The Last Half of Life, published
in 1922. In his introduction to the later book, he wrote:
Our life, bounded by birth and death, has five chief stages, each of which, while
it may be divided into substages, also passes into the next so gradually that we cannot date,
save roughly and approximately, the transition from one period to that which succeeds it.
These more marked nodes in the unity of man's individual existence are: (1) childhood,
(2) adolescence from puberty to full nubility, (3) middle life or the prime, when we are at the
apex of our aggregate of powers, ranging from twenty-five or thirty to forty or forty-five and
comprising thus the fifteen or twenty years now commonly called our best, (4) senescence,
which begins in the early forties, or before in woman, and (5) senectitude, the post-
climacteric or old age proper. My own life work, such as it is, as a genetic psychologist was
devoted for years to the study of infancy and childhood, then to the phenomena of youth,
later to adulthood and the stage of sex maturity. To complete a long-cherished program I have
now finally tried, aided by the first-hand knowledge that advancing years have brought, to
understand better the two last and closing stages of human life [p. v i i ] .
The history of the study of personality development over the life span can
be broken into two periods. The period from 1850 to 1920 saw a good deal
of empirical study of child and adolescent development, with almost no attention
to adulthood and later maturity. Throughout most of this period, it was supposed
Parallel to this paper, and written with a systematic basis in general psychological theory, is the
chapter by Riegel (1960) on personality theory and aging in Bin-en's Handbook of Aging and the
Individual. Riegel analyzes the contribution each of the major theories or schools of thought has made
to a systematic theory of personality in the latter half of life. He concludes that "up to the present, no
theory exists which takes full account of the aging personality [p. 8 4 4 ] . "