CHAPTER 9:

Moving into the Adult Social World

The Search for Identity

 Erik Erikson’s (1968) account of identity formation has been particularly influential in
our understanding of adolescence.
 adolescents face a crisis between identity and role confusion
 This crisis involves balancing the desire to try out many possible selves and the
need to select a single self.
 Adolescents who achieve a sense of identity are well prepared to face the next
developmental challenge: establishing intimate, sharing relationships with others.
 Erikson believed that teenagers who are confused about their identity do not
experience intimacy in human relationships but remain isolated and respond to
others stereotypically.

 adolescent egocentrism Self-absorption that is characteristic of teenagers as they search for

identity
  imaginary audience

Adolescents’ feeling that their behavior is constantly being watched by their peers

 personal fable

Belief of many adolescents that their feelings and experiences are unique and have never been
experienced by anyone else.

 illusion of invulnerability

Adolescents’ belief that misfortunes cannot happen to them.

Ethnic Identity

 These individuals typically develop an ethnic identity: They feel a part of their ethnic group and
learn the special customs and traditions of their group’s culture and heritage.
o ethnic identity
Feeling that one belongs to a specific ethnic group
 Achieving an ethnic identity seems to occur in three phases.
o Initially, adolescents have not examined their ethnic roots.
o In the second phase, adolescents begin to explore the personal impact of their ethnic
heritage.
o In the third phase, individuals achieve a distinct ethnic self-concept

Self-Esteem in Adolescence

 Self-esteem is normally very high in preschool children but declines gradually during the early
elementary school years as children compare themselves to others.
 These changes in overall level of self-esteem are accompanied by another important change:
Self-esteem becomes more differentiated as children enter adolescence
 As children progress through elementary school and enter junior high or middle school, their
academic self-concepts become particularly well defined
 During adolescence, the social component of self-esteem becomes particularly well
differentiated. Adolescents distinguish self-worth in many different social relationships.
 the late preschool years and adolescence, self-esteem becomes more complex as older children
and adolescents identify distinct domains of self-worth. This growing complexity is not
surprising; it reflects the older child’s and adolescent’s greater cognitive skill and the more
extensive social world of older children and adolescents.

Influences on Adolescents’ Self-Esteem

 What factors contribute to adolescents’ self-esteem?

 Heredity contributes indirectly. Genes help to make some youth smarter, more sociable,
more attractive, and more skilled athletically.
  Consequently, such youth are more likely to have greater self-worth because they are
competent in so many domains. In other words, genes lead to greater competence,
which fosters greater self-worth.
 Children’s and adolescents’ self-worth is also affected by how others view them,
particularly other people who are important to them. Parents matter, of course—even
to adolescents. Children are more likely to view themselves positively when their
parents are affectionate toward them and are involved with them
 Parents’ discipline also is related to self-esteem. Children with high self-esteem
generally have parents who have reasonable expectations for their children and are
willing to discuss rules and discipline with their children.
 Peers’ views are important, too. Children’s and particularly adolescents’ self-worth is
greater when they believe that their peers think highly of them.

The Myth of Storm and Stress

 Most teens love their parents and feel loved by them. And they embrace many of their parents’
values and look to them for advice.
 Of course, parent–child relations do change during adolescence. As teens become more
independent, their relationships with their parents become more egalitarian
 often with them about matters of style, taste, and freedom
 These changes are natural by-products of an evolving parent–child relationship in which the
“child” is nearly a fully independent young adult.

9.2 Romantic Relationships and Sexuality

Romantic Relationships

 romantic relationships are a sign of independence and usually result in less time spent with
family, it’s not surprising that Latino American and Asian American adolescents often begin to
date at an older age and date less frequently.
 For younger adolescents, romantic relationships offer companionship (like that provided by a
best friend) and an outlet for sexual exploration.
 intimacy, trust, and support become important features of romantic relationships
 like friendships, when children have high-quality parenting, they more readily invest in romantic
relationships as adults.
 On the one hand, adolescents involved in a romantic relationship are often more self-confident
and have greater self-esteem.
 In addition, early dating with many different partners is associated with a host of problems in
adolescence (e.g., drug use, lower grades) and is associated with less satisfying romantic
relationships in adulthood.

Sexual Behavior

 Instead, adolescents are more likely to be sexually active when they acquire (from parents,
peers, and media) permissive attitudes toward sex, when their parents don’t monitor their
behavior, when they are more physically mature, and when they drink alcohol regularly.
  h a majority of boys and girls have sex at some point during adolescence, sexual activity has very
different meanings for boys and girls.
o Girls tend to describe their first sexual partner as “someone they love,”
o but boys describe their first partner as a “casual date.”
 Girls report stronger feelings of love for their first sexual partner than for a later
partner, but boys don’t. Girls have mixed feelings after their first sexual experience
—fear and guilt mixed with happiness and excitement—whereas boys’ feelings are
more uniformly positive
 In short, for boys, sexual behavior is viewed as recreational and self-oriented; for
girls, sexual behavior is viewed as romantic and is interpreted through their capacity
to form intimate interpersonal relationships.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

 Most STIs are readily cured with antibiotics. In contrast, the prognosis is bleak for individuals
who contract the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which typically leads to acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In persons with AIDS, the immune system is no longer able
to protect the body from infections, and they often die from one of these infections.
Teenage Pregnancy and Contraception

 How can we reduce adolescent sexual behavior and teen pregnancy?

o Parents matter: when they discuss sex with their teenage children, those children are
more likely to use contraception.
o Teens who participate in such programs know more about the risks of unprotected sex
and better understand contraception as well as have safer sexual practices, such as
using contraceptives and limiting sexual partners

Sexual Minority Youth

 For most adolescents, dating and romance involve members of the opposite sex. However, in
early and mid-adolescence, some identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, intersex, or
transgender; collectively, these adolescents are often described as sexualminority youth
 For boys who identify as gay, one idea is that genes and hormones may lead some boys to feel
“different” during early adolescence; these feelings lead to an interest in gender-atypical
activities and, later, attraction to other males.
 For females, the path to a sexual-minority identity is more variable. During adolescence, some
girls are attracted to girls and consistently identify as lesbians thereafter. For some women,
attraction to other females does not emerge until later in life, often growing out of deep feelings
for a particular woman. And still other women have repeated transitions in their sexual
orientation and identity.

Dating Violence

 adolescents begin to explore romantic relationships and sex, many teens experience violence in
dating, which can include physical violence (e.g., being hit or kicked), emotional violence.
 Teens are more likely to be violent during dating when they’re exposed to violence at home
 Because dating violence leads to many harmful consequences for victims, including depression,
antisocial behavior, and substance abuse, scientists have devised programs to prevent dating
violence.

9.3 The World of Work

Career Development

(SUPER THEORY OF CAREER)

 crystallization (FIRST PHASE)

o First phase in Super’s theory of career development, in which adolescents use their
emerging identities to form ideas about careers
 During specification(SECOND PRASE)
 o individuals further limit their career possibilities by learning more about specific lines of
work and starting to obtain the training required for a specific job.
 Implementation(20’S) Third phase in Super’s theory of career development
o in which individuals enter the workforce.

Personality-Type Theory

 According to Holland’s personality-type theory, people find work fulfilling when the
important features of a job or profession fit their personality.


 When people have jobs that match their personality type, they are more productive employees
in the short run and they have more stable career paths in the long run.

Social Cognitive Career Theory

According to social cognitive career theory (Brown & Lent, 2016; Lent, 2005) progress toward a vocation
rest on self-efficacy, which refers to youths’ beliefs about their ability to succeed in specific domains and
their outcome expectations, which refers to youths’ beliefs about the likely outcome of their behavior.

 . These beliefs lead to interests—youth enjoy activities in which they’re skilled and likely to
succeed. And interests lead to goals—youth decide that they should pursue activities in which
they’re interested. Pursuing these activities often leads to additional success, strengthening
youths’ beliefs about themselves and the outcomes they’re likely to experience.

Part-Time Employment

 1. School performance suffers. When students work more than approximately 15 to 20 hours
per week, they become less engaged in school and are less likely to be successful in college.
  2. Mental health and behavioral problems. Adolescents who work long hours—more than 15 or
20 hours a week—are more likely to experience anxiety and depression; in addition, their self-
esteem and quality of life often suffer.
 3. Teens learn bad habits for handling money.
o Adults sometimes argue that work is good for teenagers because it teaches them “the
value of a dollar,” but in reality, the typical teenage pattern is to “earn and spend.

9.4 The Dark Side

Drug Use

Teenage Drinking

 Teen use of illicit drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine often makes headlines, but in
reality, most adolescents avoid drugs, with one glaring exception—alcohol.
 Teens are more likely to drink when their parents drink, when their parents do not monitor their
teen’s behavior, and when parents are not warm toward them
 they’re more likely to drink when peers do (Leung, Toumbourou, & Hemphill, 2014). Finally,
teens who report frequent life stresses— problems with parents or peers and, for minority
teens, racial discrimination—more often drink.
 Stopping teens from drinking before it becomes habitual is essential because adolescents who
drink are at risk for becoming alcohol-dependent, depressed, or anxious as adults

Teenage Smoking

 When parents smoke, their teenage children are more likely to smoke, too. But the parent–child
relationship also contributes: Teens are less likely to smoke when they experience the
supportive parenting associated with authoritative parenting.
 Teenagers more often smoke when peers do
 What’s more, smoking is often the fateful first step on the path to abuse of more powerful
substances, including alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine

Depression

Disorder characterized by pervasive feelings of sadness, irritability, and low self-esteem

o Adolescents sometimes become depressed when they feel as if they’ve lost

control of their lives.

Treating Depression

Drugs and psychotherapy are successful in helping adolescents who are depressed.

Delinquency

 adolescent-limited antisocial behavior of youth who engage in relatively minor criminal acts but
aren’t consistently antisocial.
 life-course persistent antisocial behavior Antisocial behavior that emerges at an early age and
continues throughout life
 o 1. Biological contributions. Born to Be Bad is the title of at least two movies, two songs,
and three books. In other words, the claim is that biology pushes people to be
aggressive long before experience can affect development
o 2. Cognitive processes. The cognitive skills described in Chapters 6 and 8 also play a role in
antisocial behavior.
o 3. Family processes. Antisocial behavior has roots in parenting. Adolescents are more
likely to become involved in delinquent acts when their parents use harsh discipline or
don’t monitor effectively.
o 4. Poverty. Aggressive and antisocial behavior is more common among children living in
poverty than among children who are economically advantaged.

CHAPTER 10: Becoming an Adult

Physical, Cognitive, and Personality Development in Young Adulthood

10.1 Emerging Adulthood

They refer to it as emerging adulthood, a period when individuals are not adolescents but are not yet
fully adults (Arnett, 2013, 2016). Emerging adulthood is a time to explore careers, self-identity, and
commitments.

o Period between late teens and mid- to late 20s when individuals are not
adolescents but are not yet fully adults

Role Transitions Marking Adulthood

 When people become adults in different cultures depends on how you define adulthood and the
kind of role transitions cultures create.

Cross-Cultural Evidence of Role Transitions

 rites of passage
o Rituals marking initiation into adulthood
o Rites of passage may involve highly elaborate steps that take days or weeks, or they may
be compressed into a few minutes. Initiates are usually dressed in apparel reserved for
the ritual to denote their special position.

Role Transitions in Western Cultures

 In Western cultures, the most widely used criteria for deciding whether a person has reached
adulthood are role transitions, which involve assuming new responsibilities and duties
o role transitions Movement into the next stage of development marked by assumption of
new responsibilities and duties

Neuroscience, Behavior, and Emerging Adulthood

  Emerging adulthood is a time of very important developments in the brain, especially in terms of
strengthening interconnections across different brain structures that help integrate different
modes of thinking and feeling
 There is considerable evidence that the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in high-
level thinking, is not fully developed until a person reaches his or her mid-20s.
 Edgework
o The desire to live life more on the edge through physically and emotionally threatening
situations on the boundary between life and death. Risky behavior such as this tends to
decrease over the course of young adulthood.

Achieving Milestones: Education, Workforce, and Erikson’s Intimacy

 Large numbers of students are in at least their mid-20s or older. For them, going to
college isn’t the marker of adulthood. Colleges usually refer to students over age 25
as returning adult students, which implies that these individuals have already
reached adulthood.

Establishing Intimacy

 According to Erikson, the major task for young adults is dealing with the
psychosocial conflict of intimacy versus isolation.
 intimacy versus isolation
o Sixth stage in Erikson’s theory and the major psychosocial task for young
adults.
o Once a person’s identity is established, Erikson (1982) believed that he or
she is ready to create a shared identity with another—intimacy.
 So When Do People Become Adults?

Evidence is clear that the years between late adolescence and the late twenties to early thirties may
reflect a distinct life stage researchers call emerging adulthood.

binge drinking Type of drinking defined for men as consuming five or more drinks in a row and for
women as consuming four or more drinks in a row within the past two week.

alcohol use disorder Drinking pattern that results in significant and recurrent consequences that reflect
loss of reliable control over alcohol use.