Human Growth and Development / Unit 13 HGD 1822 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Formal and Postformal Thought at Midlife
Captions available
The idea
Formal operations continue into adulthood but are not universal and show most in areas of expertise; postformal thought's status as a true stage is debated.
In practice
An engineer reasoning abstractly about bridges but concretely about tax forms.
Where people slip
Postformal thought combines experience-based intuition with logic to accept more than one viable answer.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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