Chapter 5
ERIK ERIKSON
- Personality develops in a predetermined order
through eight stages of psychosocial development, from
infancy to adulthood.
Society’s Influence - the ego emerges from and is
largely shaped by society. Emphasis on social and
historical factors was in contrast with Freud’s mostly
biological viewpoint. To Erikson, the ego exists as
potential at birth, but it must emerge from within a
cultural environment.
Epigenetic Principle - Erikson believed that the ego
develops throughout various stages of life according to
an epigenetic principle, a term borrowed from
embryology. Epigenetic development implies a step-by-
step growth of fetal organs.
EGO IDENTITY serves to protect individuals in the face
of change produced by sudden changes in personal or
situational factors. Ego identity is the sense of identity
that provides individuals with the ability to experience
their sense of who they are, and also act on that sense,
in a way that has continuity and sameness
INFANCY (TRUST VS. MISTRUST) 1yr old
- A period encompassing approximately the first year of
life. To Erikson, infancy is a time of incorporation, with
infants “taking in” not only through their mouth but
through their various sense organs as well.
- Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of HOPE
- Failing to acquire the virtue of hope will lead to the
development of fear and WITHDRAWAL.
EARLY CHILDHOOD (AUTONOMY VS. SHAME & DOUBT)
2-3
- young children receive pleasure not only from
mastering the sphincter muscle but also from mastering
other body functions such as urinating, walking,
throwing, holding, and so on. In addition, children
develop a sense of control over their interpersonal
environment, as well as a measure of self-control.
However, early childhood is also a time of experiencing
doubt and shame as children learn that many of their
attempts at autonomy are unsuccessful.
- The aim must be “self-control without a loss of self-
esteem”
Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of WILL,
failure in this stage will lead to COMPULSION.
PLAY AGE (INITIATIVE V. GUILT) 3-5
- Erikson’s third stage of development is the play age, a
period covering the same time as Freud’s phallic phase
roughly ages 3 to 5 years. Erikson believed that the
Oedipus complex is but one of several important
developments during the play stage. He contended that
in addition to identifying with their parents, preschool-
age children are developing locomotion, language skills,
curiosity, imagination, and the ability to set goals
A healthy balance between initiative and guilt is
important.
Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of purpose,
while failure results in a sense of guilt
SCHOOL AGE(INDUSTRY VS. INFERIORITY) 6-13
- the social world of children is expanding beyond family
to include peers, teachers, and other adult models. For
school-age children, their wish to know becomes strong
and is tied to their basic striving for competence. In
normal development, children strive industriously to
read and write, to hunt and fish, or to learn the skills
required by their culture.
- Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of
competence.
Failure leads to inertia.
Too much industry and a child will develop what Erikson
called narrow virtuosity.
ADOLESCENCE (IDENTITY VS. ROLE CONFUSION) 13-19
- is one of the most crucial developmental stages
because, by the end of this period, a person must gain a
firm sense of identity. Although ego identity neither
begins nor ends during adolescence, the crisis between
identity and identity confusion reaches its ascendance
during this stage. Erikson saw adolescence as a period
of social latency, just as he saw school age as a time of
sexual latency.
- The search for ego identity reaches a climax during
adolescence as young people strive to find out who they
are and who they are not.
What should happen at the end of this stage is “a
reintegrated sense of self, of what one wants to do or
be, and of one’s appropriate sex role”.
• Success in this stage leads to a healthy identity and
development of fidelity.
• Those who do not complete this stage well may be left
feeling confused about their role and place in life.
YOUNG ADULTHOOD ( INTIMACY VS. ISOLATION) 19-30
After achieving a sense of identity during adolescence,
people must acquire the ability to fuse that identity with
the identity of another person while maintaining their
sense of individuality.
Intimacy is the ability to fuse one’s identity with that of
another person without fear of losing it.
The psychosocial counterpart to intimacy is isolation,
defined as “the incapacity to take chances with one’s
identity by sharing true intimacy”.
During this period, the major conflict centers on forming
intimate, loving relationships with other people.
• Success leads to strong relationships, while
failure results in loneliness and isolation.
• Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of love.
ADULTHOOD ( GENERATIVITY VS. STAGNATION) 31-60
- The time when people begin to take their place in
society and assume responsibility for whatever society
produces
- Adulthood is characterized by the psychosexual mode
of procreativity, the psychosocial crisis of generativity
versus stagnation, and the basic strength of care.
- The syntonic quality of adulthood is generativity,
defined as “the generation of new beings as well as new
products and new ideas”
OLD AGE (EGO INTEGRITY VS. DESPAIR) 60+
- Old age need not mean that people are no longer
generative.
- Old age can be a time of joy, playfulness, and wonder;
but it is also a time of senility, depression, and despair.
- Integrity means a feeling of wholeness and coherence,
an ability to hold together one’s sense of “I-ness”
despite diminishing physical and intellectual powers.
- Ego integrity as “the acceptance of one’s one and only
life cycle as something that had to be”
• Success at these stages leads to feelings of wisdom,
while failure results in regret, bitterness, and despair or
disdain
CARL ROGERS
HUMANISTIC THEORIES - The primary assumption of
the humanistic (currently known as “positive
psychology”) approach is that people strive toward
meaning, growth, wellbeing, happiness, and
psychological health. States of positive emotion and
happiness foster psychological health and pro-social
behavior.
Person Centered Theory
Rogers postulated two broad assumptions:
The Formative Tendency - Rogers believed that there is
a tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to
evolve from simpler to more complex forms. For the
entire universe, a creative process, rather than a
disintegrative one, is in operation.
Actualizing Tendency - The tendency within all humans
(and other animals and plants) to move toward
completion or fulfillment of potentials.
2 Subsets of Actualizing Tendency ‘the master of motive’
MAINTENANCE - similarly, to the lower step of Maslow's
Hierarchy of needs. It includes such basic needs as food,
air, and safety; but it also includes the tendency to resist
change and seek the status quo.
ENHANCEMENT - Even though people have a strong
desire to maintain the status quo, they are willing to
learn and to change. The need to become more, to
develop, and to achieve growth is called enhancement.
Actualizing Tendency - “People have within themselves
the creative power to solve problems, to alter their self-
concepts, and to become increasingly self-directed.
Conditions for Actualization Tendency - Specifically,
people must be involved in a relationship with a partner
who is (a) congruent, or authentic, and who
demonstrates (b) empathy and (c) unconditional
positive regard
- Rogers contended that whenever congruence,
unconditional positive regard, and empathy are present
in a relationship, psychological growth will invariably
occur. For this reason, he regarded these three
conditions as both necessary and sufficient conditions
for becoming a fully functioning or selfactualizing
person
SELF-ACTUALIZATION - The primary tendency of the
organism is to maintain, actualize, and enhance itself
1. Self-Concept It includes all those aspects of one’s
being and one’s experiences that are perceived in
awareness (though not always accurately) by the
individual.
2. Ideal-Self Defined as one’s view of self as one wishes
to be. The ideal self contains all those attributes, usually
positive, that people aspire to possess.
THE SELF- CONCEPT AND THE IDEAL SELF
- A wide gap between the ideal self and the self-concept
indicates incongruence and an unhealthy personality.
Positive Regard- the person develops a need to be
loved, liked, or accepted by another person.
Positive Self-Regard- defined as the experience of
prizing or valuing one’s self.
BARRIERS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Conditions of worth is given only under certain
circumstances. If we perceive that some of our
behaviors are approved and some disapproved, then we
see that our worth is conditional.
External Evaluations - Our perceptions of other
people's view of us
Incongruence - Conditions of worth that we received
during childhood lead to a somewhat false self-
concept, one based on distortions and denials
Vulnerability Roger believed the greater the
incongruence between our perceived self (self-concept)
and our organismic experience, the more vulnerable we
are.
Anxiety and Threat whereas vulnerability exists when
we have no awareness of the incongruent within
ourselves anxiety and threat are experienced as we gain
awareness of such incongruence
- Defensiveness is the protection of the self-concept
against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of
experiences inconsistent with it. To prevent this
inconsistency between our organismic experience and
our perceived self, we react in a defensive manner.
Disorganization Most people engage in defensive
behavior, but sometimes defenses fail and become
disorganized or psychotic
CRITERIA TO BEING A FULLY FUNCTIONING PERSON
1. Openness to experience
2. Existential living
3. Organismic trust
4. Experiential freedom
5. Creativity
LEARNING-COGNITIVE THEORIES
- If you want to understand behavior, then focus only on
behavior, not on hypothetical and unobservable states
such as thoughts, feelings, drives, or motives. All
behaviors are learned through association and/or its
consequences (whether it is reinforced or punished).
The shaped desired behavior we have to understand
and then establish the conditions that bring about those
particular behaviors
LEARNING THEORY (Behaviorism)
Burrhus Frederic Skinner 1904-1990
BASIC PREMISES
 Behavior is learned from the environment.
 When born our mind is 'tabula rasa' (a blank
slate).
 Psychology should be seen as a Science.
Behaviorism is primarily concerned with
observable behavior. Behavior is the result of
stimulusresponse (S-R).]
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
- a neutral
(conditioned) stimulus is paired withthat is, immediately
precedes – an unconditioned stimulus a number of
times until it is capable of bringing
about a previously unconditioned response, now called
the conditioned response. The simplest examples can
include reflexive behavior. Light shined in the eye
stimulates the pupil to contract and food placed on the
tongue brings about salivation. Classical conditioning,
however, is not limited to simple reflexes. It can also
be responsible for more complex human learning like
phobias, fears, and anxieties.
Operant conditioning is a method of learning that
occurs through reinforcements/rewards and
punishments for behavior. Through operant
conditioning, an individual makes an association
between a particular behavior and a consequence
(Skinner, 1938).
- With operant conditioning, reinforcement is used to
increase the probability that a given behavior will recur.
Three factors are essential in operant conditioning: (1)
the antecedent, or environment in which behavior takes
place; (2) the behavior, or response; and (3) the
consequence that follows the behavior.
SKINNER’S BOX - The design of the Skinner box is
intended to keep an animal from experiencing other
stimuli, which can lead to stress and anxiety.
CATEGORIES OF REINFORCEMENT
REINFORCEMENT
1. Positive Reinforcement - any stimulus that, when
added to a situation, increases the probability that a
given behavior will occur.
2. Negative Reinforcement - – strengthens behavior
because it stops or removes an unpleasant experience.
PUNISHMENT
1. Positive Punishment - adding an undesirable stimulus
to stop or decrease a behavior
2. Negative Punishment - taking away
a pleasant stimulus to decrease or Taiwan’s education
pays more
attention to the instilling and
accumulation of knowledge,
cultivating the students’ respect to
the knowledge and authority and
building the ability to inherit the
knowledge system.
✓ The acceptance to knowledge
✓ Structured
✓ Consistence
stop a behavior
EXTINCTION - Once learned, responses can be lost for at
least four reasons. First, they can simply be forgotten
during the passage of time. Second, and more likely,
they can be lost to the inference of preceding or
subsequent learning. Third, they can disappear due to
punishment. A fourth case of lost learning is extinction,
defined as the tendency of a previously acquired
response to become progressively weakened upon
nonreinforcement.
Reinforcement can follow behavior on either a
continuous schedule or on an intermittent schedule.
There are four basic intermittent schedules:
(1) fixed ratio, on which the organism is
reinforced intermittently according to the number of
responses it makes.
(2) variable-ratio, on which the organism is reinforced
after the nth response on the average.
(3) fixed interval, on which the organism is reinforced
for the first response following a designated period.
(4) variable interval, on which the organism is
reinforced after the lapse of various periods of
time.
MODULE 08: CULTURAL CONCEPT OF THE SELF
EDWARD T. HALL (1914-2009)
- One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself
is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you
to pay attention to those details of life which
differentiate them from you.
WEST
EDUCATION
- US pays great attention to train the
students’ practice ability to utilize the
knowledge, cultivating the students.
question to the knowledge and authority
and building the ability to extend the
knowledge system.
✓ The dynamic changes to knowledge.
✓ Unstructured
✓ Freedom
EAST
Taiwan’s education pays more
attention to the instilling and
accumulation of knowledge,
cultivating the students’ respect to
the knowledge and authority and
building the ability to inherit the
knowledge system.
✓ The acceptance to knowledge
✓ Structured
✓ Consistence
WEST
TEACHERS
- American teachers were
more knowledgeable about
general educational theories
and classroom skills.
✓ Evokes creative thinking.
✓ Encourage students to
challenge the knowledge.
✓ Teaching atmosphere
lively and vivid
WEST
Self-confidence
Independence
Curiosity
Free thinking

EAST
✓ Chinese teachers had stronger
knowledge of the subject matter
and building the solid
foundation.
✓ Spend more time with their
students.
✓ Persistence.
✓ Authority figure

EAST
Discipline
Obey
Good observers
Patient
Respectful
Afraid of making mistakes

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
- WEST
Informal, egalitarian.
People most comfortable with
their social equals; importance
of social rankings minimize
EAST
Formal, hierarchical.
People most comfortable in the
presence of a hierarchy in which they
know their position and the
customs/rules for behavior in the situation.