Find which capacity drops out in one recurring situation

Instead of asking where you are "undeveloped" in general, pin down the one situation where you reliably act younger and name the capacity that goes missing there.

Warum es wirkt

Fischer’s skill theory treats ability as a skill built for particular tasks and contexts rather than a general level a person carries everywhere, and Fischer, Yan and Stewart describe adult development as a web of strands rather than one ladder. If that is right, a lagging "line" shows up most clearly as a drop in one kind of situation. Locating the drop in a concrete, recurring scene turns a vague sense of being immature somewhere into a specific capacity you can work on where it is actually needed.

So gehst du vor

1. Name one situation that keeps going worse than the rest of your life — visiting your parents, budget meetings, arguments with your partner, being criticised in public.
2. Write down the last two times it happened: what you did, said and felt, in plain words.
3. Ask which capacity was missing, using one line at a time: Could I think clearly? Could I feel and name what I felt? Could I see it from their side? Did I act on what I believed was right? Was my body calm enough to choose?
4. Compare it with a situation where you handle similar pressure well, and note what is different about the setting — who is there, what is at stake, how much support you have.
5. Pick that one capacity, in that one situation, as the thing to practise for the next month.

Evidenz

Fischer (1980) set out skill theory, in which cognitive development is the construction of skills for particular tasks. Fischer and Bidell’s handbook chapter argues that action is "nowhere near as stable" as static stage conceptions predict, and analyses that variation directly. Fischer, Yan and Stewart contrast the ladder metaphor of development with a web in which each person constructs a unique pattern of strands. Esbjörn-Hargens describes lines as distinct capacities in which each person is more developed in some areas than others, and Wilber (2003) lists developmental lines or streams among the phenomena any integral psychology must include. Locating a lag in one situation is an application of these ideas and has not been tested as an intervention. (mechanistic)

Acting worse in one setting can also come from fatigue, old relational patterns, or a real problem in that setting rather than an undeveloped capacity. Naming the capacity is a working hypothesis, not a finding about you.

Quellen

• Fischer, K. W. (1980). A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. Psychological Review, 87(6), 477–531.
• Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic Development of Action and Thought. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology (6th ed., Vol. 1). Wiley.
• Fischer, K. W., Yan, Z., & Stewart, J. (2003). Adult Cognitive Development: Dynamics in the Developmental Web. In J. Valsiner & K. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of Developmental Psychology (pp. 491–516). Sage.
• Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2010). An Overview of Integral Theory: An All-Inclusive Framework for the Twenty-First Century. In S. Esbjörn-Hargens (Ed.), Integral Theory in Action: Applied, Theoretical, and Constructive Perspectives on the AQAL Model. SUNY Press. (First circulated as Integral Institute Resource Paper No. 1, 2009.)
• Wilber, K. (2003). Waves, streams, states, and self: An outline of an integral psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 31(2–3), 22–49.

Häufiger Fehler

Concluding "I am emotionally immature" from one setting. The research points the other way: the same person performs at different levels in different contexts, so the useful unit is the situation, not your whole self.