Labouvie Vief

Cognitive – Emotion Theory

Gisela Labouvie-Vief (1980)
• Theory of pragmatic thought and cognitive-emotional
complexity
• Sees adult development as an active process of
constructing successively more adaptive levels of activity
• Extended Piaget’s cognitive-development theory into
adulthood
• Labouvie-Vief demonstrated how contextual factors can
influence cognitive development
 Labouvie-Vief's perspective on adult development

Emphasize that children face limitless opportunities,

while adults move from hypothetical to
pragmatic/practical/realistic as they face real-world
problems and make conscious commitment

Adults put aside childish dreams and focus on reality

Conscious commitment
• Adults select one path/course out of many alternatives
• And they become more aware of the constraints of
everyday life
• While balancing roles, they accept contradictions,
inconsistencies and put aside discomfort and take all this
as part of life
• They develop ways of thinking that thrive on imperfection
and they compromise.
According to Labouvie-Vief there is a motivating factor for
this change – It is the need to specialize

“This conscious commitment to one pathway and

the deliberate disregard of other logical choices
may mark the onset of adult maturity”
Successive adaptations

Developmental sequence of successive levels of logical

thought has been reframed as successive adaptations
This introduced a view of development as a continuous
process throughout life.

Piaget viewed this adult Labouvie-Vief

commitment as a saw it as positive
regression/weakening/de adaption to
generation reality.
Cognitive and emotive integration

Adults gain reflective capacity and are able to

integrate cognition and emotion, and are able to
differentiate.
By studying hundreds of 10 + to 80 + year olds,
Labouview-Vief found that people gain
cognitive-affect complexity as they mature.
In other words, adults become more aware of
positive and negative feelings, and are better able to
coordinate those feelings into a complex, organized
structure.
Emotional intelligence
Labouvie-Vief noted cognitive-affect complexity as a vital
aspect of emotional intelligence that allows adults to deal
with practical problems.
Individuals who demonstrate high cognitive-affect complexity
tend to be more tolerant and open-minded toward events and
people, make sense of conflicting emotions, regulate emotions,
and think rationally about real-world dilemmas. 
In short, as young adults mature, they become aware of
multiple perspectives, integrate logic with reality, and develop
cognitive-emotional complexity that allows them to become
increasingly specialized and context-bound in action and
thought that opens higher levels of competence.
Perspectives on Labouvie-Vief
Labouvie-Vief's observations about cognitive-affect
complexity being a vital aspect of emotional intelligence seem
to correlate with definitions of self-actualization and wisdom
found in other theories of human development.
From a neurophysiologic perspective, the stages of human
development derived from Piaget and Labouvie-Vief seem to
correlate with research showing the developmental stages of
the brain.