Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Erikson: Post−Freudian
Theory
(^274) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
and therefore produce offspring who are well-adjusted and happy. Bill Peterson
tested this idea in a study of college students and their parents (Peterson, 2006).
Peterson predicted that the children of generative parents would not only be happier
but also possess a high level of future time perspective, which is a technical way to
say the children of generative parents will look toward the future more and do so
with an optimistic view of things to come. To test these predictions, parents completed
the LGS and students completed a measure of well-being that included items about
general happiness, sense of freedom, and confidence in one’s self. Students also com-
pleted a measure of future time perspective whereby they rated how much they typi-
callythink about the next day, next month, the next year, and 10 years from now.
The results were supportive of the general notion that having a sense of generativ-
ity is important to effective parenting. The children of highly generative parents had more
confidence in themselves, had a stronger sense of freedom, and were just generally hap-
pier with life. Additionally, the children of highly generative parents had a stronger fu-
ture time orientation meaning they spent time thinking about their future and, based on
the overall well-being measure, felt pretty good about it. When these findings are
considered within Erikson’s framework, they make perfect sense. The opposite of gen-
erativity is self-absorption and stagnation. If parents are overly self-absorbed and
self-indulgent, then they are spending less time being concerned about the well-being of
their children. Conversely, if parents are highly generative, then they are concerned
about the development of their children and will do everything within their power to
provide a stimulating and supportive environment in which children will thrive.
Generativity Versus Stagnation
Like all stages, adulthood consists of two interacting conflicts, generativity and stag-
nation. Erikson generally considered stagnation and generativity to be opposite ends
of the same continuum. In other words, a person who is high on generativity tends
to be low on stagnation and vice versa. But recently, researchers have begun to ques-
tion how opposing these two aspects of adult development really are and have ex-
plored stagnation and generativity as somewhat independent constructs (Van Hiel,
Mervielde, & De Fruyt, 2006). One reason for this switch from Erikson’s model is
that it might be possible for people to be both generative and stagnant. Such a sit-
uation could happen if a person really wants to be generative and understands the
importance of being generative but, for whatever reason, cannot overcome his or
her own self-involvement. He or she may realize that generativity is the next stage
in development but just cannot get there.
One way to determine the independence of these two constructs is to measure
both separately and then measure several outcomes. If they are opposite levels of the
same continuum, then when generativity positively predicts an outcome such as
mental health, stagnation should negatively predict mental health. But if they do not
always match, then the two constructs might be separate concepts. Because stagna-
tion had never been measured separate from generativity before, the researchers had
to create a measure from scratch. Based on the description of stagnation provided by
other scholars (e.g., Bradley & Marcia, 1998), Van Hiel and colleagues (2006) cre-
ated a self-report measure consisting of items such as “I often keep a distance between
268 Part II Psychodynamic Theories