In this video I introduce developmental psychology, which considers how we develop physically, cognitively, socially, and morally over our lifespan. I discuss some of the recurrent themes we will see in this chapter and then describe Erikson’s division of life into 8 ages: oral-sensory, muscular-anal, locomotor-genital, latency, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and maturity. Each of these stages has its own unique psychosocial task that must be resolved in order to achieve a sense of ego integrity at the end of life.

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Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In this video we’re going to start exploring developmental psychology. So throughout this course we’ve looked at many factors that can influence people’s behaviors and we’ve seen the many ways that people can differ from one another. We’ve seen differences in biology like levels of neurotransmitters or hormones, we’ve seen differences in cognition and memory, differences in traits like intelligence or big five personality traits, and differences in motivations.

So now we’re going to ask the question of how do these differences develop? How do people become the people that they are? And in doing this, we’re going to consider development physically, cognitively, socially, and morally. Essentially we’re asking the question, how is it that we progress through life? And in looking at this we’re going to see some repeated themes. These include asking whether our development occurs continuously or if it happens in stages, or thinking about which things change over time and which things have a tendency to remain stable. And lastly a question that we’ve asked throughout this course which is, how is it that genes and environment interact in shaping our development?

We’ll start looking at developmental psychology by stepping back and looking at the entire lifespan and this brings us to the work of Erik Erikson and here’s a picture of Erikson here. Erikson proposed that we can think of life as having 8 main stages and each of these stages has a particular task that we need to work on and resolve successfully in order to have a good life. And so Erikson’s eight stages were influenced by Freud and so the first four stages we’ll see a lot of overlap with Freud’s psychosexual stages and then he proposed four more stages for later periods of life.

We’ll begin with the first stage which is called the oral-sensory stage. This should remind you of Freud’s oral stage and so the main psychosocial task here is developing a sense of basic trust. This lasts from birth to about age 1 and the main way that Erikson thought we developed trust relates to feeding. So we can think about whether or not we’re going to be fed, can we trust our caregiver to provide for us because we’re vulnerable we’re very helpless at this age. And so we need to learn to trust somebody else that they will help to take care of us.

And then we move to the next stage which is the muscular-anal stage and again this should remind you of Freud’s anal stage and this lasts from age 1 to about age 3. Erikson thought the main task of this stage is developing a sense of autonomy. You’re learning to take control over yourself, in this case, as Freud suggested the focus is on toilet training. So you’re learning how to control your own body and this will hopefully help you to develop a sense of autonomy.

Then we move to the third stage which is the locomotor-genital stage and this lasts from age 3 to about age 6 and what Erikson thought was that this is where we develop a sense of initiative and exploration. If you think of Freud’s stage, the genital stage, Freud proposed that the oedipal complex was occurring here, right? And the main idea is that you have to learn to break free from your mother, from your primary caregiver. You’re learning that mom is not everything and you need to be able to explore the world on your own and you need to sort of cut some of those ties. So this idea for Erikson would be you develop a sense of initiative; you’re willing to explore the world on your own and become more independent.

And next we move to the latency stage and this is from age 6 to about age 12. The main task here is developing either a sense of competence or a sense of inferiority. And so this is the age where children begin going to school and so Erikson thought this is where you learn, you know, whether or not you can achieve things. Can you actually accomplish the tasks that people set out for you? If you can, then you’ll develop a sense of competence, but if you can’t or you feel that you can’t, you might develop a sense of inferiority.

And then we move to the next stage and this is where we sort of separate from Freud’s initial four stages and we get into these later stages of life for Erikson. We start with adolescence from about age 12 to age 18 he thought the primary task of adolescents is to develop a sense of personal identity. But you have to figure out, who am I? He thought this happens during adolescence and if you don’t develop a sense of identity you experience what he called “role confusion“. The main way he thought you figure out your sense of identity is through your peers. And this is the age where your peers become much more important, you know? When you’re a younger kid, sure, you go to school, you make friends, but your family is still sort of the main unit of your social life. But once you become a teenager, you start thinking of your peers as your main social life. And so one way you figure out your sense of identity is in comparison to your peer groups: “Ok, I have these people that I am in a group with and and, of course, we share things we have things in common but what makes me unique? What do I add to the group?” and that is related to developing your sense of individual identity.

Once you do this, you’re ready to move into the stage of early adulthood, lasting from 18 to 40, where the primary task is developing a sense of intimacy. So you know who you are and now you figure out, how do I make this relationship include another person? How do I develop a close relationship with somebody else in a sense of intimacy?

And then you move to middle adulthood from age 40 to about age 65 and here the main focus, the main psychosocial task, is productivity or what Erikson called “generativity“; that you’re a productive member of society. You’re making a contribution to society and this can also include a contribution in the form of having children and raising them successfully and raising the next generation that’s going to continue society.

And then lastly you move to the stage of maturity from 65 and up and he thought this is a period where you’re not so much concerned with productivity and generativity, but you’re looking back on your life. You’re reflecting saying, you know, “how have I done?” and he thought you either experience a sense of “ego integrity” which is that you look back on your life and you think that was a life well-lived. “I’ve done well, I’ve accomplished things. I’ve contributed to the next generation, and so I’m happy with how my life went”. Or he thought you experienced a sense of despair when you look back on your life and you have many regrets. You feel you didn’t do things properly, you didn’t achieve the things you could have achieved, you didn’t become a productive member of society. He thought this would lead you to despair.

Now we should note that Erickson’s theory is of course very dependent on culture and societal norms, right? These ages, for instance, if we’re looking at a society where children don’t go to school from a young age, where they begin working at a very young age, where people have children at a much younger age rather than waiting until, you know, early adulthood or middle adulthood to be raising a family, perhaps they’re doing that much younger. And so we have to keep in mind that there are norms involved in these but I think it still provides a fairly useful overall view of life and outline of sort of different stages we might go through, and the idea that we have different tasks at different stages of our life. Different things are more or less important at different times. And so in these next videos in this unit, we’ll be looking at different stages of our life different time periods in much more detail. So, I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!