PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN 3 GENERATIONS OF COLLEGE-STUDENTS

The college years are a time of significant growth in the individual's adaptive capacities in the cognitive, emotional, and social domains. Erikson's theory of 1963 predicts that the college years are specifica lly a time of growth in the psychosocial issue of ego identity, but al ong with this development are increases in other aspects of psychosoci al functioning. The opportunity to test this prediction across three c ohorts of college students was presented through an expanded follow-up study of Constantinople's 1969 classic investigation of psychosocial development in a sample of over 300 undergraduates. Data were collecte d from undergraduates attending the same university in 1977 and 1988, allowing for a three-wave cross-sectional sequences design. The result s indicated that, for all times of measurement and most of Erikson's p sychosocial stages, college seniors generally had higher development t han their younger classmates. Furthermore, females generally had highe r psychosocial development scores than did males. The lack of cohort d ifferences in the observed patterns of development and the minimal ext ent of cohort differences across college classes suggests that persona lity development during college is relatively uninfluenced by shifting psychosocial pressures over decades of social change.