Vaiallant spent most of her life researching on adult development. He identified six adult stages that one must go through to mature as an adult which include; developing an identity, development of intimacy, career consolidation, generativity, becoming keeper of the meaning and achieving integrity. In his model he identified new variables which had been avoided. The variables include; educational level and physical health. According to vaillant, physical health relates to work out and body monitoring measured by weight. His evidence on the effects of education alone on effective aging include the observation that a college group of men born between 1918- 1932 benefited from the same life time as white males born in 2000. Additionally, he noted that a contrast of the college learned unit with the inner city group revealed that the college students lived ten years longer than the inner city. He explains the strong influence of educational levels on objective health by concluding that higher education levels suggest that both self-supervision and self-care combined with the avoidance of toxic traits such smoking and excessive alcohol.
Literally, he measured being in late adult hood by describing the six functional domains which include; Physical assessed objective physical health, a subjective feeling of good health, period of time participants was fully active, objective mental health measure by work, love and play, subjective life fulfilment and objective social support. He viewed successful aging not as predictors but as a chance for a positive life. Therefore, he needed to put these categories in good perspective and not as predictors of good aging because his examples were biased. His aim was to help educators guide students in better life style direction through education and counseling.
In addition valliant added to Erikson,s theories, he expanded on the idea of maturity. He stated that maturity is not about age but displaying traits such as forgiveness or gratitude. The idea of maturity came from an extra of defense mechanism which viallant stated that they differ in degrees of development. He went ahead and explained that there are immature ways of dealing with things and also mature ways which are not determined by age. Therefore, we should develop a defense mechanism of suppression, that is we try to stay away from those negative thoughts that may interfere with our reasoning.
References
Aktu, Y., & İlhan, T. (2017). Individuals’ Life Structures in the Early Adulthood Period Based on Levinson’s Theory. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 17(4), 1383-1403.
Boerner, M., Joseph, S., & Murphy, D. (2020). A theory on reports of constructive (real) and illusory posttraumatic growth. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(3), 384-399.
Bayon, M. C., Lafuente, E., & Vaillant, Y. (2016). Human capital and the decision to exploit innovative opportunity. Management Decision.
