Question 1
For people to make favorable psychological changes, their personal characteristics and the characteristics of their environment play a big role. This is the same case for college students. Personal characteristics like commitment, hard work, self-esteem, and determination can help college students in achieving desired favorable psychological changes in all sectors including academics, co-curricular activities, or even their body health (Berk, 2013). For a change to be effected perfectly, the proprietor must be determined to achieve it and remain committed to the course of achieving it. High self-esteem usually boosts the desire to achieve. High self-esteem coupled with hard work are, therefore, key ingredients contributed by the proprietor themselves, to their own success in achieving favorable psychological changes.
A college environment that affords a student good friends can be key in their bid to achieve favorable psychological changes. Good friends can encourage and support one aside from preventing them from falling off the grid. Moreover, a college environment which affords the student peer counselors, professional counselors, and other structures, which offer much needed social support to students who might want to improve various aspects of their life is key to the achievement of favorable psychological changes (Berk, 2013).
Question 2
Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s abilities to perform and complete tasks. Self-efficacy is not congenital; rather, it is a quality that is determined by a person’s past experiences and their environment (Berk, 2013). Traditionally, men are known to have more self-efficacy than women. However, in recent times, professionally accomplished women have shown higher efficacy which, in my opinion, is down to two things majorly.
First, most professionally accomplished women have struggled to get to where they are. This certainly holds more water in less affluent or disadvantaged societies. By the time a woman gets to professional levels that are above those of most men, she has seen it all. By such a time, she does not see anything difficult in her life, hence the heightened self-efficacy.
Secondly, in disadvantaged societies, women who have survived all odds to become professionally accomplished individuals are highly regarded in their societies. Their societies are proud of them and believe in the abilities of these women. One’s knowledge that other people around them believe in them can lift their belief in themselves hence their self-efficacy (Berk, 2013). Moreover, such knowledge usually puts pressure on one to perform hence lifting their self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Question 3
The main developmental differences between early adulthood and middle adulthood are summarized in Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. The theory summarizes the psychosocial changes of early adulthood as a stage of intimacy versus isolation (Berk, 2013). On the other side, middle adulthood is summarized as a stage of generativity versus stagnation.
Early adulthood is a period of transition from adolescence to a stage of emotional stability. The period is therefore, characterized by the desire to love and be loved and great fear of isolation. The desire to raise stable families also leads young adults to work extra-hard and strive to get rich as quickly as possible. Middle adulthood has little to do with emotion. Rather, this is a period of self-assessment. Middle-aged adults are always trying to find out whether they were productive enough in their tentative years or they have stagnated in their bid to try and become rich (Berk, 2013). Unlike early adulthood, which can be a period of emotional experimentation, middle adulthood is a time of reckoning and often comes with increased religiosity. Finally, early adulthood is characterized by physical changes that bring the adult shape while the physical changes of middle adulthood, if any, are those that lead one to aging.
Reference
Berk, L. E. (2013). Exploring Lifespan Development (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
