Zittoun Tania, Gillespie Alex, Bernal Marcos Marcos José
Institute of psychology and education, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
Cult Psychol. 2024 Dec;30(4):813-840. doi: 10.1177/1354067X231201384. Epub 2023 Sep 11.
What is it that develops in adult life? Development through work and family life have been documented and theorised in detail, but much less is known about what is learned beyond these domains, through people's engagements in hobbies or when out of work (e.g., unemployed, retired). We argue that adult development can be addressed in general terms, beyond domain specificity; drawing on our sociocultural psychology framework, and assuming an open-system perspective, we highlight the two processes of progressive differentiation and psychological distancing in diverse domains of activity. To address development over time, we explore 20 years of people's lives through the longitudinal analysis of online diaries. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis enables us to identify people's experiences of rupture and transitions, the diversity of their domains of interests, and how these change over time. Based on a case-study, we show that, if the general direction of development does entail progressive differentiation and distanciation, these processes can also be hindered by the cumulation of vulnerabilising events. Finally, we show that some domains, such as the long-standing activity of diary writing, can itself be used as resource for adult development.
在成年生活中会发生什么？通过工作和家庭生活实现的发展已有详细记载并形成了理论，但对于人们在这些领域之外，通过参与爱好活动或在失业（如无业、退休）时所学到的东西，我们了解得却少得多。我们认为，成年发展可以从一般层面来探讨，而不限于特定领域；借鉴我们的社会文化心理学框架，并假设采用开放系统视角，我们强调了在不同活动领域中渐进分化和心理疏离这两个过程。为了探讨随时间推移的发展情况，我们通过对在线日记的纵向分析，探究了人们20年的生活。定量分析和定性分析相结合，使我们能够确定人们经历的断裂和转变、他们兴趣领域的多样性，以及这些如何随时间变化。基于一个案例研究，我们表明，如果发展的总体方向确实需要渐进分化和疏离，那么这些过程也可能会受到使情况恶化的事件积累的阻碍。最后，我们表明，某些领域，比如长期坚持的写日记活动，其本身就可以作为成年发展的一种资源。
