Positive Adult Development is one of the four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified. The other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Positive adult developmental processes are divided into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (orders, stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.
The achievement of complete development at the end of adolescence was suggested by Freud, Piaget, and Binet among others. Research in Positive Adult Development questions not only that development ceases after adolescence, but also the notion of decline after late adolescence postulated by many gerontologists. Positive development does occur during adulthood. Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health, life satisfaction, and degree of contribution to the society.
Read more about Positive Adult Development: Directions of Change in Positive Adult Development, Measurements in Positive Adult Development
Famous quotes containing the words positive, adult and/or development:
“It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil—far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word “human” disappears from the race.”
—Jill Tweedie (b. 1936)
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)