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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 also further divided the concept of positive adult development into six distinct areas of study: hierarchical complexity (i.e., orders or stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.^[2]

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.^[3] 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.^[4] Current research supports the idea that personal adjustment and personal growth are two main themes in positive adult development research. Personal adjustment refers to how well an individual is able to master and adapt to their environment, while personal growth refers to having the ability to have deep insight into oneself, others, and the world around them.^[5] One other benefit is allowing for changes in social policies to create effective, efficient interventions to help optimize the aging process to as many of our aging generation as possible.^[6] 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.

This field stems originally from several threads of work within psychology. Erik Erikson^[7] proposed a number of adult periods. Daniel Levinson^[8] also had described a number of "seasons of life." Abraham Maslow proposed an adult hierarchy of needs. And Jean Piaget came to agree there were adult postformal stages beyond the stage of formal operations, his earlier theory had located an endpoint to the development of cognitive structures, and wherein came to a conclusion at the adolescent's acquisition of formal operations.^[9] John L. Horn^[10] found that crystallized intelligence, represented by such things as vocabulary size, increased in adulthood. Robert Kegan^[11] combined a Piagetian and an existential-phenomenological approach to create what he called constructive-developmental psychology. Lawrence Kohlberg^[12] found that in early adulthood, some people come to think of moral, ethical and societal issues in multivariate terms (Systematic stage 11, the first postformal stage). They use multiple relations. During middle adulthood some become principled reasoners about moral issues; for instance, by using abstract principles to relate systems of rights to systems of duties (Meta systematic stage 12, the second postformal stage). Likewise, Cheryl Armon^[13] found that by middle adulthood, some people could reason about interpersonal relationships at an order of complexity similar to that described by Lawrence Kohlberg.

Research on positive adult development have grown and expanded upon these early threads and theory's in a number of directions. Summaries of some of the initial positive adult development research can be found in the works of Commons, Richards, and Armon,^[14] as well as in Alexander and Langer.^[15] Four postformal adult stages of development beyond the formal stage have been discovered in a wide variety of domains. The total number of stages across the life span now stands at 15. Periods and Seasons have been described.^{[note 1]}

A number of edited books were written on the topic of positive adult development in the 1990s^{[note 2]} and more recently.^{[note 3]} In the past decade, researchers have turned to investigating methods to foster positive development in educational as well as in organizational settings, rather than by just describing it and/or measuring it. These methods are used in organizational and educational setting. Some use developmentally designed, structured public discourse to address complex public issues.^[17]

To determine whether a particular development in adulthood is positive or not, a value-judgment must be made about what kind of change in adult life is optimal or beneficial, and correspondingly what changes in adulthood are negative or deleterious. There are several competing standards for what constitutes positive development in adulthood, which can be broadly grouped into five directions;^[18] orthogenetic (becoming more hierarchically complex), selective/adaptive (becoming more likely to pass on your genes and for offspring to survive and thrive), veridical (becoming less biased in your view of the world), eudemonic (becoming happier and healthier) and virtuous (becoming a better person from a particular moral or ethical standpoint).^[19]

Studies have been conducted on various components of adult development. One such focused on the relationship between life experiences and optimism.^[19] Another study (Helson, 2001),^[20] presented three positive "paths"^[20] a third followed the effects of attitudes of caring for others, which started in adolescence, and then continues into adulthood.^[21] Each of the adult individual follows a path through adult development. These three paths were created using Environmental Mastery (EM) and Personal Growth (PG) scales developed by Carol D. Ryff. The three paths, identified as "Achievers", "Conservers", and "Seekers", were formulated from the patterns that resulted when Ryff's EM and PG tests were administered in the study. The Achievers scored high on both scales. The Conservers scored high on EM and low of PG. The Seekers scored low of EM and high on PG. All three paths were unique but all equally positive. This distinction was concluded to be the result of individual skill and motivation, with each individual's personal action creating personal strengths and personality features. The attributes of emotionality (both positive and negative), processes of identity, and the alterations in self-control across the adulthood years predicted the path classifications. Additionally, each path consisted of a strength profile on the "four criteria of maturity",^[20] being competence, generativity, ego development, and wisdom.

Assessment of positive adult development can measure quantitative (something that can be counted or measured) or qualitative (things described and cannot be measured in a numerical fashion) change.^[18] Measurements of quantitative change assess change on a defined continuous variable, these variables would include such measures as IQ, reaction time, or indicators of personal maturity, authenticity or self-actualization. Quantitative change can be discontinuous, if a sudden step-change is in value, or continuous when changes occur gradually and incrementally.[1]

Qualitative change is evidenced by a change in kind, rather than a change in amount, as exemplified by the switch from caterpillar to butterfly. Assessments of qualitative change in adulthood involve assigning written or numerical data to a stage within a defined stage model, according to defined assessment criteria. Researchers have developed a number of such instruments and methods to measure adult development stages, such as the moral judgment interview of Kohlberg, the Berlin Wisdom Interview, the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, the Subject-Object Interview,^[22] and the model of hierarchical complexity.

• Adult development