REPRESENTATIONS OF SELF ACROSS THE LIFE-SPAN

This research extends a cognitive-developmental approach to examining age differences in self-representation from adolescence to mature adul thood and later life. The authors suggest that mature adults move from representations of self that are relatively poorly differentiated fro m others or social conventions to ones that involve emphasis on proces s, context, and individuality. Participants (n men = 73, n women = 76) , ranging in age from 11 to 85 years, provided spontaneous accounts of their self-representations and responded to measures assessing cognit ive and emotional functioning and broad dimensions of personality On a verage, self-representation scores peaked in middle-aged adults and we re lowest in the preadolescent and older adult age groups. Level of se lf-representation was related to cognitive and personality variables, but there was some evidence that the pattern of correlates shifted fro m younger (ages 15-45) to older (ages 46-85) age segments.