Whose psychosocial theory emphasizes stages and crises across the lifespan?

• A. Erik Erikson
• B. Sigmund Freud
• C. Jean Piaget
• D. Lawrence Kohlberg

Answer: (A)

The idea being tested is identifying who framed development as a lifelong sequence of stages, each with its own psychosocial crisis. Erik Erikson developed eight stages spanning infancy to old age, and at each stage a key psychosocial conflict must be resolved. How you navigate these crises shapes your emerging strengths and later functioning, yielding virtues such as trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and wisdom. This lifelong, stage-based view of psychosocial development is what sets Erikson’s theory apart.

Freud centers on psychosexual stages tied to early childhood drives, not a broad lifespan of psychosocial crises. Piaget focuses on cognitive development and changes in thinking across stages. Kohlberg deals with moral development and reasoning rather than a comprehensive psychosocial life-span framework.