The person in development: a reflection on continuity and change in the definition of life-course patterns

Abstract

Socio-personal development is the combination of processes through which
people acquire, throughout their entire life-course, cognitions, affections, and
behaviours which allow them to adapt to the social and cultural environment in
which they live, as well as to relate to themselves as objects of knowledge and
affection, and as a source of behaviours. Interindividual differences in those
cognitions, affections and behaviours, which define each individual's personal
style, are a consequence of the different developmental paths that are followed
throughout each person's life-course. These paths are also determined by a
person's own characteristics and the quality of his or her interactions and
experiences which occur in contact with very different contexts and socializing
agents. What is presented here is a reflection on the risk and protection factors that
explain both the continuity and the change in the way in which our different paths
in life begin to form and become defined.