Positive adult development

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Positive adult development is a subfield of developmental psychology that studies positive development during adulthood. It is one of four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified, according to Michael Commons; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline.^[1] Commons divided positive adult developmental processes into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (i.e., orders or stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.

The development of people has focused on children and adolescence with several theories as proposed by Freud, Piaget, and Binet. Research in positive adult development supports the theory that development occurs during adulthood.^[2] Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health, life satisfaction, and degree of contribution to society.^[3] One other benefit is allowing for changes in social policy's to create effective, efficient interventions to help optimize the aging process to as many of our aging generation as possible.^[4] In these studies, adults that were older rated higher than these categories then those that were younger, thus supporting that there is indeed a positive development that occurs in adulthood.