Developmental expectations for the self and most other people: Age grading in three functions of social comparison.

Abstract

This study focused on beliefs about one's own compared with other people's development in adulthood. Young, middle-aged, and old adults rated person-descriptive attributes with respect to developmental change throughout adulthood for the self and other people, controllability for self and other, desirability, degree of self-descriptiveness, relevance as a developmental goal, and typical age-timing of attribute as developmental goal. Various aspects of subjective identification with age groups were also assessed. Findings suggested 3 modes of comparison: self-assessment reflected in congruence between self and other-ascribed developmental trajectories, self-enhancement involved in more favorable expectations for the self regarding old age, and self-improvement expressed in developmental aspirations toward higher status age groups. The present research addresses adults' conceptions about development in adulthood. Specifically, this research juxtaposes development-related conceptions pertaining to the self and normative conceptions related to most other people.1 Previous research on normative conceptions about adult development showed high levels of agreement among adolescents and various adult age groups (J. Heckhausen, 1989; Heckhausen & Baltes, 1991; Heckhausen, Dixon, & Baltes, 1989; Hosenfeld, 1988). Normative conceptions about adult development constitute widely shared common-sense knowledge and thus may provide a normative reference system of development-r elated expectations against which individual developmental trajectories are evaluated. It is common-sense knowledge, for instance, that forgetfulness is likely to increase in old age. Therefore, people entering old age may try to counteract this normative decline by developing their memory skills. Also, incidents of memory failure in older people may more likely be attributed to age, rather than other causes. Normative conceptions about development are widely shared among members of a given society (Hagestad, 1990; Heckhausen & Baltes, 1991; Heckhausen et al., 1989; Neugarten, Moore, & Lowe, 1965). They function as social constructions of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) and are resistent to short-lived changes in actual age-chronological timing of life transitions (Modell, 1980). Normative conceptions about development