Erik Erikson
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40 free Erik Erikson trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Erik Erikson changed how psychology thinks about growing up, and about growing old. Where earlier theories treated personality as settled in the early years, he mapped eight stages running across the whole of life, each built around a conflict that has to be worked through. He also gave everyday speech the phrase "identity crisis". This quiz covers both the theory and the man. Expect questions on the eight stages and the strength each one is meant to leave behind, alongside his prize-winning books, his famous teachers and patients, and a life story with more twists than most textbooks mention. It suits psychology and nursing students revising the developmental stages for an exam, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone curious about the thinker behind the model. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which American illustrator, a Stockbridge neighbor, became Erik Erikson's patient and friend?
Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell lived in the same small Massachusetts town where Erikson worked at the Austen Riggs Center from 1951 to 1960, treating emotionally troubled young people.
Q 02Erik Erikson rose to an Ivy League professorship despite never having earned which of these?
A university degree
A university degree was something Erikson never earned: after secondary school he spent years roaming Europe, and his later academic posts rested on his clinical reputation and writing.
Q 03Erik Erikson grew up as Erik Homburger; where did the surname Erikson come from when he adopted it?
He invented it himself
He invented it himself, dropping his stepfather's surname as the family became American citizens. His children were said to be glad they would no longer be teased as "Hamburger".
Q 04In Pittsburgh, Erik Erikson worked at a nursery school alongside which future children's TV host?
Fred Rogers
Fred Rogers and the baby-care author Benjamin Spock both worked with Erikson at the Arsenal Nursery School. Rogers later built Erikson's ideas about young children into his television lessons.
Q 05Erik Erikson coined the term "identity crisis" for a struggle he tied to which period of life?
Adolescence
Adolescence is when Erikson believed people must settle who they are and how they fit in. He wrote that his own youthful confusion had sat on the borderline of neurosis.
Q 06Which fact about his origins did Erik Erikson never learn, fueling his interest in identity?
Who his father was
Who his father was stayed a mystery: Erikson's mother conceived him outside her marriage, and for years he was told that his stepfather was his real father.
Q 07Erik Erikson won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1969 study of militant nonviolence centered on which leader?
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi is the subject of Gandhi's Truth, which also won a National Book Award. Erikson built it around a 1918 textile workers' strike that Gandhi led in Ahmedabad.
Q 08Which word names Erik Erikson's eight stages of development, running from infancy to old age?
Psychosocial
Psychosocial is the label because each stage turns on a conflict between a person's inner needs and the social world around them, a clash Erikson believed continued across the whole lifespan.
Q 09Which virtue did Erik Erikson say babies gain by resolving trust versus mistrust, his first stage?
Hope
Hope emerges when caregivers reliably provide warmth and comfort, Erikson argued. He added that an infant needs a little mistrust too, to recognize real danger later on.
Q 10Erik Erikson defied his stepfather's wishes by choosing to study which subject in Munich?
Art
Art won out over the career his stepfather had planned for him: Erikson enrolled at an art school in Munich, then spent years roaming Germany and Italy trading his sketches.
Q 11Which child analyst saw Erik Erikson's gift with pupils at a small school and later analyzed him?
Anna Freud
Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, helped set up the school and taught there. She urged the young tutor to study psychoanalysis, and he went on to specialize in analyzing children himself.
Q 12Which virtue did Erik Erikson assign to late life, when people weigh integrity against despair?
Wisdom
Wisdom comes, in Erikson's account, from accepting one's life in full, the defeats along with the victories. Those who cannot may come to feel that life is unfair and fear dying.
Q 13Erik Erikson's 1958 Study in Psychoanalysis and History examines which young religious reformer?
Martin Luther
Q 21In Erik Erikson's theory, toddlers doing things for themselves weigh shame and doubt against what?
Autonomy
Autonomy grows when caregivers encourage a toddler's self-sufficient behavior. Erikson warned that demanding too much too soon, or ridiculing early attempts, breeds self-doubt instead.
Q 22Erik Erikson was born in which German city, where his mother had fled from abroad while pregnant?
Frankfurt
Frankfurt was his birthplace, but Erikson grew up in Karlsruhe, where his mother, by then a trained nurse, settled and remarried three years after his birth.
Q 23Erik Erikson paired inferiority with which quality, built by praising schoolchildren's handiwork?
Industry
Martin Luther became the model for Erikson's idea of the identity crisis in Young Man Luther, one of the first psychobiographies of a famous historical figure.
Q 14What did Erik Erikson call the midlife urge to guide the young, the opposite of stagnation?
Generativity
Generativity entered the vocabulary in 1950 as Erikson's name for looking after those who come next. Having grown old himself, he decided it mattered more in later life than he had first thought.
Q 15Erik Erikson tied his second stage, the toddler years, to mastering which everyday milestone?
Toilet training
Toilet training is the classic test of this stage. Erikson urged parents not to punish failures, so that a child gains self-control without losing self-esteem.
Q 16In which city did Erik Erikson earn his psychoanalytic diploma in 1933, just before leaving Europe?
Vienna
Vienna was where Erikson arrived at 25 to tutor at a small school and stayed to train at the Psychoanalytic Institute. He left in the year Hitler took power in Germany.
Q 17Which 1950 book by Erik Erikson first set out his eight stages and remains his best-known work?
Childhood and Society
Childhood and Society was the first of Erikson's books to become popular, and it carried the phrase "identity crisis" to a wide readership.
Q 18Erik Erikson said preschoolers discouraged from taking initiative are left with a sense of what?
Guilt
Guilt, in Erikson's third stage, makes a child feel like a burden to others. He warned that critical answers to a preschooler's endless questions can plant it too.
Q 19Erik Erikson left a California professorship in 1950 when professors there were required to sign what?
A loyalty oath
A loyalty oath was demanded of the university's teachers amid Cold War fears of Soviet influence. Several who refused to sign lost their jobs, and Erikson was among those who left.
Q 20Erik Erikson was born in Germany, but his mother's Jewish family came from which Nordic country?
Denmark
Denmark was home to Erikson's mother, who left Copenhagen for Germany on finding she was pregnant. In 1933 the family tried to settle there but could not regain citizenship.
Industry, for Erikson, meant diligence: sticking at a task until it is finished and putting work before pleasure. He saw the elementary school years as critical for self-confidence.
Q 24In Erik Erikson's sixth stage, young adults who cannot form intimate bonds risk which outcome?
Isolation
Isolation is the risk, and Erikson thought fear of rejection often lay behind it. He argued that people need a settled sense of who they are before they can commit to someone else.
Q 25Erik Erikson retired in 1970 as a professor of human development at which Ivy League school?
Harvard
Harvard made Erikson a professor of human development in the 1960s, and he taught there until he retired. He kept writing long afterwards, co-authoring a book on old age in his eighties.
Q 26While studying psychoanalysis, Erik Erikson earned a diploma in which method of teaching children?
Montessori
Montessori classes ran alongside Erikson's psychoanalytic studies. The method's focus on how children develop suited a tutor who was learning to analyze the young.
Q 27Who added a ninth stage to Erik Erikson's theory in an extended edition published after his death?
His widow
His widow, Joan, wrote the new chapters at 93. She argued that in one's eighties and nineties the earlier conflicts return, with the negative side now leading.
Q 28In 1938 Erik Erikson traveled from Yale to study child-rearing on a reservation of which Native people?
The Sioux
The Sioux fieldwork took Erikson to a South Dakota reservation, far from the consulting room. It began his lifelong effort to show how a culture shapes the way its young grow up.
Q 29On reaching the United States, Erik Erikson became the first child psychoanalyst in which city?
Boston
Boston gave Erikson work at Massachusetts General Hospital and a child guidance center, where he quickly built a singular reputation as a clinician.
Q 30Which virtue did Erik Erikson tie to resolving the conflict of identity versus role confusion?
Fidelity
Fidelity, in Erikson's sense, is the ability to commit to other people and to accept them despite their differences. He saw it as the prize of a well-resolved fifth stage.