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Industry Versus Inferiority

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Achievement (need for); Erickson’s fourth stage productivity; Latency stage of development; Self-esteem levels

Definition

Industry vs. Inferiority is the stage in which children enter into the greater society beyond the family for the first time. If they succeed in navigating this stage, then they are able to develop a meaningful social role to give back to society. They will become industrious, namely, productive and contributing members to society as a whole. If they do not succeed at this stage, they may develop low self-esteem, culminating in a sense of inferiority, namely, viewing themselves as unproductive and possibly not fully useful members of society.

Introduction

Erik Erikson’s (1950) stages of development consist of several stages individuals need to traverse in order to successfully move on to the next stage and to progress to higher levels of healthy development.The fourth stage is Industry vs. Inferiority. This stage marks a child’s entrance into society and an...

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Correspondence to Safaa Issawi .

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Issawi, S., Dauphin, B. (2017). Industry Versus Inferiority. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_593-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_593-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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