Erikson, Piaget & Psychology Theories & Concepts Explained

Identity Crisis Examples in Adolescent: 7 Signs & Erikson’s Stage 5

Identity crisis examples in teenagers include sudden shifts in friend groups, intense questioning of family beliefs, and drastic changes in appearance or hobbies. This turning point occurs during Erikson’s fifth stage of development, Identity vs. Role Confusion (ages 12–18), when adolescents explore different values, beliefs, and social roles to build a cohesive sense of self. Failure to navigate this transition...

Correlation vs Causation: Real-Life Examples That Reveal the Difference

Correlation vs causation examples are everywhere — in health headlines, social media feeds, and psychology research papers. A correlation tells you that two variables move together; causation tells you one actually produces the other. These are not the same thing, and treating them as if they were leads to bad science, flawed policy, and decisions that can cause real harm....

Maslow’s Humanistic Psychology: Self-Actualization & Human Potential

Self-actualization is Abraham Maslow’s term for the human drive to become everything you’re capable of becoming — developing your unique talents, values, and potential rather than simply meeting basic needs. For decades, psychology was dominated by two opposing forces: Freud’s psychoanalysis viewing humans as driven by unconscious sexual and aggressive urges, and behaviorism treating people as programmable organisms shaped by...

The Genital Stage: Freud’s Final Stage & Mature Love Development

The genital stage is the fifth and final phase of Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual development theory, beginning at puberty and continuing throughout the rest of a person’s life. Unlike earlier stages where the libido is focused on self-gratification, the genital stage is characterized by the awakening of sexual interests in others. The goal of this stage is to establish a healthy...

Separation Anxiety in Infants and Stranger Anxiety: What’s Normal and Why It Happens

Separation anxiety in infants is the distress babies show when separated from a primary caregiver, typically emerging between 8 and 14 months of age. It often develops alongside infant stranger anxiety — a related but distinct response to unfamiliar faces that appears a little earlier, around 6 to 8 months. Both are signs of healthy cognitive and emotional development, not...

Moral Development Theories: How the Big Ideas Differ

Moral development theories explain how people learn to tell right from wrong, and four major thinkers shaped most of what psychologists know about it today. Freud rooted morality in guilt and the superego, Skinner and Bandura traced it through reinforcement and modeling, Piaget and Kohlberg mapped it onto cognitive stages, and Gilligan added the often-overlooked role of care and relationships....