Thriving across the Life Span

This chapter reviews and synthesizes various models of positive human development and thriving from multiple domains in the psychological and medical literatures, across all stages of the life span from infancy through later life. Particular attention is paid to conceptualizations of thriving from the positive youth development tradition, and their relations to notions of positive functioning in the cognitive and developmental literatures in childhood, positive psychology research in adulthood, and models of successful development in later life. The authors propose an integrative definition and a set of core principles of thriving, and elucidate the distinction between a thriving orientation and thriving as a developmental process. The chapter concludes by offering a set of guiding methodological principles for the scientific study of thriving across the life span.