Thea's Essay Compilation

Personality Development Experiences

     Personal Development is part of human maturity and development they experience across the lifespan. Various studies and theories are created to understand how humans develop emotional growth, cognitive skills, social skills, and intellect throughout their lives. I for one have experienced some of those theories in relation to each stage of development.

    

      Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Theory shows how social factors affect the development of a human throughout life. This theory has 8 stages with each having a psychosocial conflict affecting the growth of a person. In this theory, I experienced the 1st stage from birth to age one where I learned how to trust or mistrust people when they feed me food, help me walk and any possible thing a child can do since my needs are met I have overcome the issue of mistrusting people and develop a trust mostly to my grandmothers. During early childhood at the age of two to three, I learned how to be independent and realized I can do some things without asking for help from my parents which made me develop autonomy instead of shame and doubt about where I don't rely on others to help me walk on my own and to help me use the toilet properly. In the 3rd stage when I was in preschool I learned to explore and discover new things with or without the control of the elders such as doing math problems that I become fearful of doing and socializing with egoistical children who criticize me I have developed guilt but as my parents helped me by reporting those kids and the teacher giving them a lecture I developed a sense of initiative where I can purposively do things without the fear of criticism. In the 4th stage during elementary, I had become competent in school activities mostly in getting high grades which made me quite inferior to my classmates who do better than me but I learned that we are all unique in our own ways and that there are lots of different things a person can do that the other cannot make me develop industry instead of inferiority. Currently, in the 5th stage I am experiencing the identity vs. role confusion of my adolescence where I started to care for connections with people to gain appreciation and pride so that I can do things with less worry and know what I want to be and do in my future but in the present, I think I had developed identity since I know that I dislike socializing people that I cannot trust.

    

 Lawrence Kohlberg's Moral Development Theory studies how children develop morality and how they distinguish right and wrong. It has 3 levels with 2 stages each. In the Preconventional level where adults help me make decisions and the consequences of it, I experienced 2 stages 1st one is when I was in preschool when they told me to do the math homework that I have to obey or else I will get punishments so in this stage obeying will help you avoid punishment and in the 2nd stage includes individualism and exchange where I experienced having a preference of morality of an action based on what reward is given to me such as when I helped my friend do her homework by sharing my answers to her and they gave me praise with a sermon in return. During the Conventional level where there are specific rules to follow to gain acceptance and responsibility, I experienced the 3rd stage social approval where I decide if an action is acceptable if it was approved such as helping someone with their homework and the 4th stage law and order where I noticed that there are rules in distinguishing a moral action such as not sharing answers to a classmate which is cheating. Lastly, the Postconventional stage refers to the development of morality based on the personal view of ethics on the 5th stage of social contract orientation I realized that not all laws are 100% moral rather its just the externality of it which people think is widely acceptable depending on the setting such as death penalty it is considered as the right to prevent the rise of crime rates though the church opposes it including my Christian parents saying that it's inhuman and everyone deserves a second chance, therefore, I should aim for the action resulting in general good with less harm and on the 6th stage universal ethical principles where human values and rights are factors in deciding a moral action which I experience in my everyday life.

     

These are a few of the theories I significantly experienced that developed me into who I am today there are still more of them and they will pile up.