Most people find human development fascinating. This is understandable; to know more about your own development and that of your species can only be interesting. Unfortunately, many people equate human development with child development. There are various reasons for this, one of which is the fact that much more research has been done on child development that on the other part of human development – adult development. This should be seen against the background that the span of adulthood could relatively easily be five times more than that of childhood. In this book we therefore wish to contribute to the status of adult developmental psychology as a subdiscipline in its own right. Information on various aspects of adult behaviour is available in abundance in the media such as the Internet, magazines and newspapers. However, this plethora of information has created a problem of its own: it is very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is why one of the main objectives of the book is to provide the reader with the most recent scientific information. – Taken from the back cover of “Adult Development and Ageing”