Research Paper On Erikson Life Stages

Erikson theorizes that in such a period, adolescents have certain tasks, one of which is identifying who they are. An individual successfully completes the task by staying true to his or her self, whereas when a person fails that stage, it leads to role confusion; consequently creating a weak sense of self. (Block 2011). The stage also entails a variety of personal challenges and limitations faced as well as a series of needs to be met, including: attention, guidance, independence, stability, and acceptance, among other needs. Meeting an adolescent’s needs is fundamental to their healthy development and personal growth. Nevertheless, adolescence remains as puzzling of a period in time for both the teens experiencing it, as well as for the individuals surrounding them, watching them as they navigate through the trials that adolescence brings them.

It outlines the struggle an individual faces in finding stability between developing a sense of forming a unique identity while still being accepted and “fitting in” with society. Erikson believed that when teenagers adequately navigated their way through this crisis, they would transpire into having a clear understanding of their individual identity and easily share this new ‘self’ with others. However, if an individual is unable to navigate their way through this crisis period, they may be uncertain of who they are which can result in a lack of understanding, leading to disconnection from society and the people around them. If youth become stuck at this stage they will be unable to become emotionally mature adults, according to Erikson’s theory. This period of an individual’s life allows them to investigate possibilities which will lead them to discovering their own identity based upon the result of their explorations.

Erik Erikson named the stage of adolescents “identity versus role confusion” (Sigelman, C. & Rider, E. pg. 343). This is a pivotal time in an individual’s life where many future endeavors; personal, academic, and professional, depend on the outcome of this stage. During this time, adolescents are trying to refine the many facets of their personality such as, political, sexual, religiousness, just to name a few. This is an arduous

Identity has been defined in many ways. It is the concept used to describe an individual's sense of who he or she is (Dashefsky and Shapiro, 1976). Changes in identity occur throughout the life cycle, however, the changes in identity are usually most notable during adolescence. Integrating a positive sense of ethnic identity into one's overall personal identity is an important task of late adolescence (Steinberg, 1996).

Culture, ethnicity, family, sexuality, and society are all factors that can influence a person’s identity. A combination of all these elements usually result in the successful discovery of self-identity. Preadolescents and adolescents often find themselves in a constant battle attempting to find who they are or who they want to be. Adolescents are faced with questions like, What do you want to be when you grow up? What colleges are you looking into? What are your plans after high school?. In a normal process of growth, teens experiment with new activities in order to find their identity, but this is not the case for every teen. Some adolescents do not go through the normal process of experimentation for various reasons.

“Identity Development “ Identity is most simply defined as a person's own sense of self; their personal sense of who they are. Identity development is intrinsically linked with adolescence because, according to John Santrock author of the book entitled Adolescence 15th edition, "...for the first time, physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development advance to the point at which the individual can sort through and synthesize childhood identities and identifications to construct a viable path toward adult maturity.” We often see the results of this sorting process in behaviors of adolescents such as adopting and shedding different personas, including speech patterns, clothing styles and peer groups. Although these transitions

I think many feelings towards death come from the unknowns that also come with dying. These unknowns are things such as the existence of an afterlife, what is feels like, and what will be left behind after they die. These unknowns and people’s answers to them largely impact how people feel towards death. As Erikson explains, psychologically this stage of life is dominated by one of two feelings, integrity or despair. According to Erikson the more productive and full we feel our life has been, the more integrity and contentment we will feel towards our death. The opposite of that would be the less we feel we have accomplished in our life, we will look at death with despair because we are generally unsatisfied with the legacy we will leave behind.

Erikson (1968) believed that the primary psychosocial task of adolescence is the formation of identity. Therefore, he called developmental conflict identity versus confusion. There are various contributing factors to the formation of identity such as cognitive development, personality as well as schools and communities etc. The onset of puberty during adolescents leads to newfound cognitive skills and physical abilities (Kroger,2004) . In addition, increased independence and autonomy leads to greater interactions with communities and schools etc. according to Erikson (1968), this allows the individual to explore relationships and ideologies. He gave particular attention to the career domain, starting “In general, it is the ability to settle

“In the teenage years, young people begin their quests for identity” (Bellows 2). According to Dr. Amy Bellows in her article “Your Teen’s Search for Identity”; our teenage years is the time period when we scour for an identity, although we find a struggle to find our true identity. Status symbols, forbidden behaviors, rebellion, idols, and cliquish exclusion are the most common ways in which us as teenagers struggle with our identity (Bellows 2-7). In other words, peer pressure and self-esteem are some of the factors that can mislead us from the path towards our “ideal” identity. Furthermore, searching for an identity influences one’s future.

The adolescent stage is one in which the human being develops from being a child into an adult, or from puberty to legal adulthood. The stage consists of the transition in both the physical and the psychological contexts ("Adolescence | Psychology Today", 2016). The transaction of the adolescent is the relationship between the environments and the person (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001). This interaction influences the adolescents development as they are in the stage of their lives whereby the trying to attain autonomy of their lives from their parents/ caregivers (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001). To achieve development to emerge into adulthood there are many identity statuses one must go through in order to achieve a sucessful development (Waterman, 1999). These identity statuses are influenced by the psychosocial enviornment of the person and these are represented in identity processes (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001). Identity processes are immeadiate processing of data that affects the identity and actually holds the identity at stake (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001). However they are the building blocks to developmental processes which is the identity growth and change over the human life span (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001).

The first status is an identity diffuser, this is a person who has not encountered a crisis of identity and has not made any commitments or done any personal exploration. The next identity status is foreclosure where an adolescent commits to a parents beliefs or values without exploring other options on their own. Moratorium is where the individual has been exploring their options but has not yet made any commitments. And finally, identify achievement is when a person has explored all their options and committed to occupation, belief, political view or gender identity (Marcia, 1966). A great deal of research has been done on the different identity statuses. For example, Waterman (1985) found no difference in gender during the formation of identity when considering political ideology, social roles, vocational choices or religious beliefs. He also found that adolescent during the pre–high school years are more likely to be identity diffusers in regard to occupational decisions and political ideology and foreclosed in the domain of religion. Overall, Waterman (1982) has found that adolescents, beginning in middle school “show a pattern of progressive identify formation characterized by frequent changes in self- concept during the early years followed by increasing consistency and stability as the person approaches high school graduation.” These finding support

All throughout our lives, we wrestle with the question of who am I and what do I want in life? However, it is usually during the adolescent years that this issue really comes to a head and we begin a more earnest search into finding ourselves and deciding the direction we want to take with our lives. One of the theorists who studied this idea of identity formation was James Marcia. Marcia proposed that there were four different stages or statuses in the development of identity which he labeled Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Identity Moratorium, and Identity Achievement. In this essay, we will briefly summarize his four different stages and then apply his theory to my own identity development during the adolescent years.

Personal identity formation is one of the main foundations of youth development, which is crucial to understand youth while working with them in the MODEL program. Adolescents generally depend on various social-psychological styles to figure out their own identity style (Crocetti, Erentaite, & Zukauskiene, 2014). Youth rely on these different styles to pursue growth and refine themselves, encrypting their own relevant data (Crocetti, Erentaite, & Zukauskiene, 2014). The identity styles can be “information-oriented, normative, and diffuse-avoidant” (Crocetti, Erentaite, & Zukauskiene, 2014, p. 1818). It will depend on how youth adjust to the various identity styles to impact the active contribution to their societies (Crocetti, Erentaite, & Zukauskiene, 2014). These identity styles reflect on positive youth development based on the “Five C’s Model, which include Competence, Confidence, Character, Connection, and Caring” (Crocetti, Erentaite, & Zukauskiene, 2014). Information-oriented identity style individuals are personally thoughtful and efficiently discover and assess self-significant data (Berzonsky, 2011). Individuals with a normative identity style naturally embrace regulations and beliefs from significant others and automatically adapt to their desires (Berzonsky, 2011). Last but not least, adolescents with a diffuse-avoidant identity style dawdle and defer managing personality issues for as long as they can (Berzonsky, 2011). The

Adolescence is the fifth stage in Erikson's psychosocial development theory. It is posited to last from ages 12 to 18, and the basic conflict inherent in the adolescent stage, which the person must resolve, is between identity and role confusion. This conflict between identity and role confusion especially plays itself out in peer relationships, but the teenager also navigates through identity and role confusion with relationships in the family unit. Identity and role confusion issues can arise with sexuality, as well as worldviews.

Erikson’s theory of identify versus role confusion, the psychological conflict of adolescence, was evident in my early adolescent years. My parents divorced shortly after I was born and due to a custody agreement, I grew up switching household’s everyday. This meant I had two different school busses, two neighborhoods, two sets of friends, and two very different parents with vastly opposing parenting styles and expectations. My dad was always very authoritative and somewhat forced independence onto me. He worked a well paying but stressful job and wasn’t home often. His absence meant my sisters and