Erikson's psychosocial development | Individuals and Society | MCAT | Khan Academy Voiceover: Now it's time to take a look at Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. So if you remember he was the second, theorist I had mentioned in the overview video. So here's Erik Erikson and his theory was actually. Greatly influenced by Freud's theory, but he emphasized the role of culture and society. So culture and society played a role in his theory. And another key difference between his theory, theory and Freud's theory is that he suggested that there was plenty of room for growth and personality throughout one's life. So this personality development spans an entire life and not just childhood which is what Freud emphasized. So Erikson assumed that a crisis can occur at each stage of development. And that. These conflicts involve differences between an individual and the needs of society. So those are where needs were competing. And successful completion of each of these eight stages. This is an eight stage theory. Successful completion at each of these stages can result in a healthy personality and acquisition of these basic virtues in this column, which I'll also go through. So, these basic virtues are basically characteristics strengths which the eagle can use to resolve future conflicts. And failure to actually complete a certain stage can result in the reduced ability to move along to further stages, and can lead to a more unhealthy personality and sense of self. So let's go straight into the first theory of Erikson's, first stage of Erikson's theory, so it's just simply stage 1. And it occurs during the first year of life. So, this crisis, this stage the crisis that it focuses on is the idea of trust versus mistrust. So, what do I mean by trust versus mistrust? So during this stage, a baby a 1 year old is pretty uncertain about the world they live in. So in order to resolve these feelings of uncertainty the baby looks toward their primary caregiver or their parents for consistent care and stability. And if the child receives this consistency of care. They are going to start developing trust and a sense of security. So this theory is the hallmark of his theory of the virtue is the virtue of hope. Because when you develop a sense of trust, the infant can have hope that when new crises arise there is a possibility that people will be there as a source of support. And failing to acquire this virtue can lead to the development of suspicion or fear and mistrust. So, that's the negative outcome. Fear and suspicion. So, as you can see this, according to Erikson, this develops within the first year of life. So, moving on to the second. Second stage. This occurs in the second year of life. And this crisis that characterizes this stage is autonomy versus shame or doubt. So what is autonomy? Autonomy is independence and then we have doubt or shame. So around 18 months to the age of 3, children begin asserting their independence by walking away from their mother, learning how to pick up which toy they wanna play with, making choices about what they wanna wear, what they wanna eat etc. So obviously, the child is gaining a sense of independence and autonomy. And Erikson says it's critical that parents allow children to do this. It's critical that children are able to explore their limits. Of their abilities within an encouraging environment, obviously. And, rather than putting on the child's clothes, a parent should be supportive and have patience. And allow the child to do it on their own. And keep on trying until they succeed. Learning, teaching the child how to ask for help, when they need it. So parents need to encourage their child to be independent. But, at the same time, protect the child so failure is avoided. So, the hallmark of this stage, the virtue achieved is a sense of independence or own personal will. And a negative outcome that can occur if the child is overly criticized or overly controlled, is that they start to feel inadequately in their ability to survive. So they can start lacking, self esteem and start feeling shame or doubt in their abilities. So those have been negative outcomes. Now the third stage is, occurs between the age of 3 to 5 years. So in this stage, children assert themselves even more, more frequently. So the crisis here that is taken a look at is, initiative versus guilt. So during this period, the primary feature involves, the child regularly interacting with other kids at school. So obviously play is central to this stage. Children are playing, they're learning how to explore interpersonal skills, they're learning how to initiate and plan activities. So, they're starting to feel more secure in their ability to lead others and make decisions. So, Erikson said at this stage, a kid will ask a lot more questions. And so here their virtue that they're gonna reach is purpose. They feel they have a sense of purpose in what they do and the choices and decisions they make. And if this tendency to ask questions and have curiosity is squelched. So if a teacher or a parent. Overly criticizes and controls the child they start to develop guilt. So the child may feel as if they are annoying to other people and they'll start to act more as a follower versus having that self initiative and drive and purpose. So too much guilt can make the child actually really slow in interacting with others. And it can. Kind of inhibit their creativity. But obviously, this comes with a caveat, because some guilt is necessary; otherwise, the child wouldn't know how to have self-control. So they need to have limits. That is that's important in this third stage. So, negative outcome Of this having a sense of guilt or feeling inadequacy. I think I spelled that wrong, inadequacy, there we go, okay. Moving on to the fourth stage. The fourth stage occurs around the ages of 6 to 12, so around School age to puberty. So here, this is where teachers take an important role according to Erikson in a child's life. So they're going to start teaching specific skills, and the child is going to work towards competence so the major crisis that's looked at here is industry versus inferiority. So at this stage the child will gain greater significance and greater self esteem, and they're gonna actually try starting to win approval from others, from teachers, from authorities, by demonstrating specific competencies that they think are valued in society. So they're gonna start developing this sense of pride in their accomplishments, so that is the virtue competence, or pride. Just change my color there, there we go. So that's the main virtue at this stage. And if the children or the child is encouraged, and their initiatives are reinforced, they're gonna start feeling industrious. And confidence, gaining confidence to achieve their goals. Now, if this initiative is not encouraged, or if it's restricted, then the child's gonna start feeling inferior or doubting their own abilities, and they may even not be able to reach their full potential, so that is the negative outcome is inferiority as a result of not feeling like they have competence. That society is demanding. Again, at this stage, some failure may be necessary so the child can develop modesty. So like I said earlier up here, there has to be some sense of guilt for the child to have control in their actions. So say one's age four, there has to be a little bit of some failure, within limits,. So the child develops modesty and they don't feel over-competent. So there has to be a good balance. Now moving onto the fifth stage. This occurs between the ages of 12 to 18, so in adolescence. So this is the transition from childhood to adulthood, and this is probably one of the most important roles. In Erikson's personality Psychosocial Development theory. So, here, the child or teenager now, is actually becoming more independent. And they're trying to look at their future in terms of career, relationships. His families, whatever. So they wanna start feeling as if they belong to society and if they fit in. So this is a major crisis looked at here is identity versus role confusion. Now in this stage. The child has to learn the rules he'll occupy as an adult. So, he may or she may actually reexamine their identity to try to figure out who they really are. And body image plays a huge role in this because the body is const, changing during this time of age. They explore possibilities. And more, based upon outcomes and they start to form this identity as a result of this exploration. Now failure to do so can, result in things that the child may say, like, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. And this can lead to role confusion. So, the positive virtue that first comes out of this is fidelity, or the ability to see oneself as unique and an integrated person as we're trying to identify who we are. Now, the negative outcome of this results in more confusion, obviously. And it can also result in, confusion of who one is. It could cause rebellion, and feelings of unhappiness. So those are the hallmarks of a negative outcome at stage 5. Now stage 6, we're moving into young adulthood. So around age 18 to about 40, young adulthood to adulthood. So here are the crisis. That's being looked at is intimacy versus isolation. And I will assume that in one second. So in younger we begin to share ourselves more intimately with other people we're trying to find love so we explore relationships leading to longer term commitments and completion of this stage. Can lead to comfortable relationships in a sense of commitment, safety, and care. Avoiding intimacy, avoiding this stage can lead to negative outcomes such as isolation or loneliness or even depression. So here we're forming close personal relationships, and this is characterized by love. And the negative outcomes can form to an inability to. It'll form relationships that could lead to, obviously, isolation and unhappiness. The seventh stage occurs in middle adulthood. It says it's around ages 40 to probably retirement. And here. Adults begin to establish, or they already have an established career. So, they begin to settle down in their relationship, begin, make families the center of their lives, and they develop of, being a part of this bigger picture. So here are the crisis is generation or generativity, so having to deal with the generation versus stagnation. So stagnation means feeling stuck as if you're not progressing. So usually adults, they feel as if they give back to society through raising their children or being productive at work. Becoming involved in community activities. Activities and organizations. So here they begin to develop a sense of care for others. They're looking out for the welfare of others. And the negative outcome that can occur if they fail to achieve those objectives is that they start to feel stagnate, they feel unproductive. All right and the last stage of Erikson theory occurs from ages 65 and older, until death. So here we're senior citizens. Citizens and we tend to slow down our perfect productivity. We've accomplished a lot in life that we've wanted to or we may not have which could lead to negative outcomes as we'll see. But now we're exploring life as a retired person. So here the major crisis is integrity versus despair. So obviously an older age where more wise during this time we contemplate back on our lives reminisce and people at this age start to realize if their lives are productive or they maybe unproductive. So they may feel guilt about their past or realize that they didn't accomplish something that they wanted to, certain regrets, or feel dissatisfied. So, first the main virtue is having that sense of wisdom. But if we feel as if we haven't accomplished what we wanted to in life and we feel unproductive and that can lead to despair and dissatisfaction upon death. So success in this stage will lead to wisdom and wisdom is what enables the person to look back on their life with a sense of closure and completeness and to also be able to accept death without fear. So this is Erikson's map of our stages of psychosocial development throughout life. And if you, if you think about it each of these stages involves the culture and society of which we develop in and it occurs throughout our life.