FINALS

CHAPTER 11 - PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN

ADOLESCENCE

★ The Nature of Adolescence.

➢ Adolescents face:
○ dramatic biological changes;
○ new experiences; and
○ new developmental tasks
➢ Negative stereotyping of adolescence has been extensive.
➢ However, acting out and boundary testing are time-honored ways in which adolescents
move toward accepting, rather than rejecting, parental values.
➢ Ethnic, cultural, gender, socioeconomic, age, and lifestyle differences influence the actual
life trajectory of each adolescent.
➢ Research on adolescent development can lead to wise and effective social policy decision
making.
➢ Youth benefit when they have caring adults in their lives in addition to parents or
guardians.
➢ Caring adults serve as role models, confidants, advocates, and resources.
○ Coaches, neighbors, teachers, mentors, after-school leaders.
➢ Only 20 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds report having meaningful relationships with adults
outside their family who are helping them to succeed.

★ Physical Changes.
❖ Puberty.
➢ Puberty: a brain-neuroendocrine process occurring primarily in early adolescence that
provides stimulation for rapid physical development.
➢ Puberty is not a single, sudden event.
➢ Pinpointing its beginning and end is difficult.
➢ Among the most noticeable changes are signs of sexual maturation and increases in
height and weight.
➢ Male pubertal characteristics:
○ Increase in body size.
○ Appearance of pubic hair, armpit hair, facial hair, chest hair.
○ Voice change.
➢ Female pubertal characteristics:
○ Marked weight and height gains.
 ○ Pubic hair growth.
○ Breast growth.
○ Menarche: a girl’s first menstruation.
➢ Hormonal changes:
○ Hormones: powerful chemical substances secreted by the endocrine glands and
carried throughout the body by the bloodstream.
■ Testosterone is associated in boys with genital development, increased
height, and deepening of the voice.
■ Estradiol is a type of estrogen that in girls is associated with breast,
uterine, and skeletal development.
➢ Hormones may contribute to psychological development; but social factors are
significant.
➢ Behavior and mood can also affect hormones.
➢ Timing and variations in puberty:
○ In the United States, the average age of menarche has declined significantly since
the mid-nineteenth century.
■ Factors include higher BMI and obesity.
➢ Experiences linked to earlier pubertal onset include nutrition, an urban environment, low
SES, adoption, father absence, family conflict, maternal harshness, child maltreatment,
and early substance use.
➢ For boys, the pubertal sequence begins around 10 to 13½ years of age and ends around 13
to 17.
➢ For girls, menarche normally occurs between ages 9 and 15.
➢ Body image:
○ Preoccupation with body image is strong throughout adolescence.
○ Girls are less happy with their bodies and have more negative body images.
○ One study found both boys’ and girls’ body images became more positive as they
moved from the beginning to the end of adolescence.
➢ Early and late maturation:
○ Early-maturing boys view themselves more positively and have more successful
peer relations.
○ Late-maturing boys report a stronger sense of identity in their thirties.
■ More time to explore life’s options.
■ Focus on physical status instead of career and achievement.
➢ Recent research confirms that it is more advantageous to be an early-maturing boy than a
late-maturing boy.
➢ Early-maturing girls show greater satisfaction early but less satisfaction later.
○ More likely to smoke, drink, be depressed, or have disorders.
○ Struggle for earlier independence, have older friends, have sexual intercourse
earlier, and more at risk for physical and verbal abuse in dating.
○ Less likely to graduate from high school.
 ○ May cohabit and marry earlier.
➢ Physical maturity does not equal cognitive maturity, and girls may get involved with
problem behaviors with long-term negative effects.

❖ The brain.
➢ The corpus callosum, where fibers connect the brain’s left and right hemispheres,
thickens in adolescence.
○ Improves the ability to process information.
➢ The prefrontal cortex, which is the highest level of the frontal lobes involved in
reasoning, decision making, and self-control, does not finish maturing until emerging
adulthood or later.
➢ The limbic system, the part of the brain where emotions and rewards are processed, is
almost completely developed in early adolescence.
○ Amygdala: the limbic system structure especially involved in emotion.

❖ Adolescent sexuality.
➢ Adolescence is a bridge between the asexual child and the sexual adult.
➢ It is a time of sexual exploration and experimentation, of sexual fantasies and realities,
and of incorporating sexuality into one’s identity.
○ Insatiable curiosity about sexuality.
○ Concern with sexual attractiveness.
○ May experience vulnerability and confusion.
➢ In the United States, the sexual culture is widely available to adolescents.
➢ Developing a sexual identity:
➢ Mastering emerging sexual feelings and forming a sense of sexual identity involve:
○ Learning to manage sexual feelings.
○ Developing new forms of intimacy.
○ Learning how to regulate sexual behavior.
➢ An adolescent’s sexual identity involves:
○ Activities and interests.
○ Styles of behavior.
○ An indication of sexual orientation.
➢ It is commonly thought that gay and lesbian youth struggle with same-sex attractions in
childhood, avoid heterosexual dating, and gradually recognize their sexual identity by
late adolescents.
➢ Many follow a different pathway.
○ For some, the awareness of same-sex attraction is abrupt, in late adolescence.
○ The majority also experience some degree of other-sex attractions.
➢ The process is more stressful than for heterosexual youth, often including disclosing their
sexual identity to family members.
➢ The timing of adolescent sexual behaviors:
○ In a U.S. national survey conducted in 2019, 38.4 percent of ninth- to twelfth-
graders reported having experienced sexual intercourse.
➢ Sexual initiation varies by ethnic group in the United States.
➢ Oral sex is common among U.S. adolescents.
➢ How adolescents initiate their sex lives may have positive or negative consequences for
their sexual health.
➢ Risk factors in adolescent sexual behavior:
➢ Many adolescents are not emotionally prepared to handle sexual experiences.
○ Early sexual activity is linked with risky behaviors.
○ Substance abuse, especially in early adolescence, is linked to sexual risk practices.
➢ Family factors that affect risk:
○ Family connectedness.
○ Parent-adolescent communication about sexuality.
○ Parental monitoring.
○ Siblings’ sexual activity.
➢ Peer, school, sport, and religious contexts also affect risk.
○ Association with more deviant peers increases risk.
○ School connectedness and academic achievement decrease risk.
○ Sports engagement—more sexual risk taking for boys who play sports; lower
sexual risk taking for girls who do so.
○ Importance of religion.
➢ Cognitive factors implicated in sexual risk taking include weak self-regulation, and
impulsiveness.
➢ Too many adolescents still do not use contraceptives, use them inconsistently, or use
those that are less effective than others.
➢ Some organizations suggest long-acting reversible contraception (L A R C) for
adolescents.
➢ Some forms of contraception, such as the pill, do not protect against S T Is.
➢ Sexually transmitted infections (S T Is): infections contracted primarily through sexual
contact, including oral-genital and anal-genital contact.
○ Nearly half the new S T I infections each year in the United States occur in 15- to
24-year-olds.
➢ Adolescent pregnancy:
➢ The United States has one of the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing
in the industrialized world.
○ Note that where teens are just as sexually active, such as in the Netherlands, the
pregnancy rate is still significantly lower.
➢ Adolescent pregnancy creates health risks for both the baby and the mother.
○ Low birth weight, neurological problems, childhood illness.
○ Most mothers drop out and never catch up economically.
 ○ Adolescent mothers often have depression and a second child, but education and
L A R C help reduce rates of both.

★ Issues in Adolescent Health.

➢ To improve adolescent health, adults should aim to:
➢ Increase health-enhancing behaviors.
○ Eating nutritious foods, exercising, wearing seat belts, getting adequate sleep.
➢ Reduce adolescents’ health-compromising behaviors.
➢ Drug abuse, violence, unprotected sex, dangerous driving.
❖ Adolescent health.
➢ Behaviors linked to both good and poor health habits in adulthood begin during
adolescence.
➢ Nutrition and exercise:
➢ National data indicate over 20 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds are overweight.
○ Fast-food meals, high in fat, are implicated, along with limited intake of fruits and
vegetables, less exercise, and more sedentary activities—including high amounts
of screen time.
○ Being obese in adolescence predicts obesity in adulthood.
➢ Exercise is linked to numerous positive physical, cognitive, and emotional outcomes.
➢ Sleep:
➢ Only about 25 percent of U.S. adolescents get eight or more hours of sleep on an average
school night.
➢ Low amounts of sleep and inconsistent sleep patterns are associated with:
○ Inattention.
○ Emotional and peer-related problems.
○ Higher anxiety and levels of suicidal ideation.
➢ Factors include electronic media, caffeine, and changes in the brain coupled with early
school start times.
➢ Leading causes of death in adolescence:
○ Unintentional injuries—almost half of all deaths.
○ Suicide.
○ Homicide.
➢ The majority of accidents involve a motor vehicle.
○ Risky driving and driving under the influence may be more important contributors
than lack of experience.
○ Of growing concern is the practice of mixing alcohol and energy drinks.
○ A high rate of intoxication is also found in adolescents who die as pedestrians or
with a vehicle other than an automobile.
❖ Substance use and abuse.
➢ Although overall drug use by adolescents has declined in recent decades, the United
States still has one of the highest rates of adolescent drug use of any developed nation.
➢ Marijuana is the illicit drug most widely used.
➢ Alcohol:
○ Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks in a row in the last two
weeks.
○ Males engage in binge drinking more than females.
○ Significant declines in usage have been observed over in recent years.
○ Adolescents who drive under the influence are a special concern.
➢ Smoking:
➢ Cigarette smoking is one of the most serious yet preventable health problems among
adolescents and emerging adults.
➢ An increasing percentage of adolescents today perceive cigarette smoking as dangerous,
and they are less accepting of being around smokers.
➢ However, a substantial number are now using e-cigarettes, which produce a vapor that
users inhale.
○ In most cases the vapor contains nicotine, but specific formulas are not regulated.
○ e-Cigarettes have a gateway effect for cigarette smoking and marijuana use.
➢ The roles of development, parents, peers, and education:
➢ Parents play an important role in preventing adolescent drug abuse.
○ Positive relationships with parents, parental monitoring, and regularly eating
dinner together as a family are all linked with a lower likelihood of substance-
abuse problems.
○ Heavy episodic drinking by parents is a risk factor for adolescent drinking.
➢ Peers also play a significant role.
➢ Academic success is a strong buffer.

❖ Eating disorders.
➢ Anorexia nervosa: the relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation.
➢ Main characteristics:
○ Restricted energy intake.
○ Presence of intense fear of gaining weight.
○ Disturbance in how body weight is experienced.
○ Obsessive thinking about weight and compulsive exercise.
➢ Anorexia is 10 times more likely in females.
➢ Bulimia nervosa: an eating disorder in which the individual consistently follows a binge-
and-purge pattern.
➢ Characteristics and traits of bulimics:
○ Preoccupied with food.
○ Have an intense fear of becoming overweight.
 ○ Are depressed or anxious.
○ Have a distorted body image.
○ Typically fall within a normal weight range.

★ Adolescent Cognition.
❖ Piaget’s theory.
➢ Around age 11, according to Piaget, the formal operational stage begins.
➢ Formal operational thought is more abstract than concrete operational thought.
○ Increased verbal problem-solving ability.
○ Increased tendency to think about thought itself.
○ Thoughts of idealism and possibilities.
○ More logical thought.
➢ Hypothetical-deductive reasoning: the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best
guesses, about ways to solve problems.
➢ Evaluating Piaget’s theory:
➢ Research indicates:
○ Much more individual variation than Piaget envisioned.
○ Culture and education exert stronger influences on cognitive development than
Piaget maintained.
➢ Most developmentalists agree cognitive development is not as stage-like as Piaget
thought.

❖ Adolescent egocentrism.
➢ Adolescent egocentrism is the heightened self-consciousness of adolescents.
➢ Imaginary audience: adolescents’ belief that others are as interested in them as they
themselves are, as well as attention-getting behavior motivated by a desire to be noticed
(“on stage”).
➢ Personal fable: the part of adolescent egocentrism that involves a sense of uniqueness
and invincibility.
○ Research shows, however, that adolescents tend to portray themselves as
vulnerable to premature death.
➢ A recent study found greater use of social networking to be linked to a higher level of
narcissism.

❖ Information processing.
➢ Important characteristics of adolescents’ information processing and thinking, as
identified by Deanna Kuhn:
○ Individuals approach cognitive levels that may or may not be achieved.
○ Considerable variation in cognitive functioning is present across individuals.
 ○ Adolescents are producers of their own p development to a greater extent than are
children.
○ The most important cognitive change is in executive function—especially,
managing one’s thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-
control.
➢ Two categories of executive function:
○ Cool executive function: psychological processes involving conscious control
driven by logical thinking and critical analysis.
■ Increases with age.
○ Hot executive function: psychological processes drive by emotion, with emotion
regulation an especially important process.
■ Peaks at 14 to 15 years of age, then declines.
➢ Cognitive control and decision making:
➢ Cognitive control: exercising effective control of thinking in a number of areas.
○ Focusing attention, reducing interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible.
○ Increases in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
➢ Adolescence is a time of increased decision making, but also a time of intense emotions
that can overwhelm decision making.
➢ The social context plays a key role in adolescent decision making, especially with regard
to risk-taking situations.
➢ Fuzzy-trace theory dual-process model: decision making is influenced by two systems
—“verbatim” analytical and gist-based intuition.
○ The verbatim analytical system is literal and precise.
○ Gist-based intuition is based on the simple, bottom-line meaning.
○ The two operate in parallel.
➢ Valeria Reyna and colleagues propose that gist-based intuition benefits adolescent
decision making more than analytical thinking does.
➢ Adolescents need opportunities to practice and discuss realistic decision making.
➢ Critical thinking:
➢ For individuals who still lack fundamental skills (such as literacy and math skills) in
adolescence, potential gains in adolescent thinking are unlikely.
➢ For most, certain cognitive changes in adolescence allow improved critical thinking:
○ Increased speed, automaticity, and capacity of information processing.
○ More breadth of content knowledge in a variety of domains.
○ Increased ability to construct new combinations of knowledge.
○ Greater range and more spontaneous use of strategies for applying or obtaining
knowledge.
★ Schools.
❖ The transition to middle or junior high school.
➢ Many changes—in the individual, in the family, and in school—are taking place at this
time.
○ School satisfaction often plunges.
➢ Top-dog phenomenon: moving from being the oldest, biggest, most powerful in
elementary school to being the youngest, smallest, and least powerful in middle or junior
high school.
○ Middle school students have a lower level of self-concept in a number of areas
than elementary school students; and teacher warmth drops.
➢ Positive aspects include feeling more grown up, more subjects to choose from, more time
with peers, increased independence, and intellectually challenging academic work.

❖ Effective schools for young adolescents.

➢ In 1989, the Carnegie Corporation recommended:
○ Smaller “communities” or “houses” that lessen the impersonality of middle
schools.
○ Lower student-to-counselor ratios.
○ Involving parents and community leaders.
○ Developing new curricula and having teachers team-teach in curriculum blocks
that integrate several disciplines.
○ Boosting students’ health and fitness with in-school programs.
○ Helping students who need public health care to get it.
➢ Experts today still find schools need a major redesign.

❖ High school.
➢ A recent analysis indicated that many high school graduates are poorly prepared for
college and also poorly prepared for the modern, high-performance workplace.
➢ To combat the issues faced by students:
○ Increase school counseling services.
○ Expand extracurricular activities.
○ Improve parental monitoring.
➢ To rectify dropping out, early intervention and mentoring helps.
○ Dropout rates vary among ethnic groups.
○ The National “I Have a Dream” Foundation has promoted significant
improvements.

❖ Service learning.
➢ Service learning is a form of education that promotes social responsibility and service to
the community.
 ○ Tutoring, helping older adults, working in a hospital, assisting in a child-care
center, cleaning up a vacant lot for a play area.
○ An important goal is becoming less self-centered and more strongly motivated to
help others.
○ It is often more effective when it gives students some degree of choice in
activities and provides opportunities to reflect on their participation.
➢ Benefits include higher grades, increased goal setting, higher self-esteem, a greater sense
of being able to make a difference, and opportunities to explore and reason about moral
issues.

CHAPTER 12 - SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ADOLESCENCE

★ The Self, Identity, and Religious/Spiritual Development.

❖ Self-esteem.
➢ The self-esteem of girls declines more during adolescence.
➢ Self-esteem reflects perceptions that do not always match reality.
○ For example, one’s perception of one’s own intelligence or attractiveness.
➢ Thus, high self-esteem may refer to accurate, justified perceptions—but it can also
indicate an unwarranted sense of superiority.
➢ Narcissism: a self-centered and self-concerned approach toward others.

❖ Self-regulation.
➢ Self-regulation is important to many aspects of adolescents’ lives.
○ Academic achievement.
○ Good health habits.
○ Avoiding risky behaviors.
➢ A key component is effortful control, which involves:
○ Inhibiting impulses.
○ Not engaging in destructive behavior.
○ Focusing and maintaining attention despite distractions.
○ Initiating and completing tasks that have long-term value, even if they may seem
unpleasant.

❖ Identity.
➢ Identity is a self-portrait composed of many pieces and domains:
○ Vocational/career identity.
○ Political identity.
○ Religious identity.
○ Relationship identity.
○ Achievement, intellectual identity.
 ○ Sexual identity.
○ Cultural/ethnic identity.
○ Interests.
○ Personality.
○ Physical identity.
➢ Erikson’s view:
○ The fifth developmental stage, experienced in adolescence, is identity versus
identity confusion.
○ The search for identity is aided by a psychosocial moratorium—the gap between
childhood security and adult autonomy.
○ Adolescents experiment with different roles and personalities.
○ Adolescents who cope with conflicting identities emerge with a new sense of self.
○ Adolescents who do not successfully resolve the identity crisis suffer identity
confusion.
➢ Developmental changes:
○ Most significantly, the individual can now sort through and synthesize childhood
identities to construct a path toward maturity.
○ James Marcia classifies individuals at this stage based on the existence or extent
of their crisis or commitment.
○ Crisis: a period of identity development during which the adolescent is exploring
alternatives.
○ Commitment: a personal investment in identity.
➢ Marcia’s four statuses of identity:
○ Identity diffusion: individuals who have not yet experienced a crisis (explored
meaningful alternatives) or made any commitments.
○ Identity foreclosure: those who have made a commitment but have not
experienced a crisis.
○ Identity moratorium: those who are in the midst of a crisis, but their
commitments are either absent or vaguely defined.
○ Identity achievement: those who have undergone a crisis and have made a
commitment.
➢ Emerging adulthood and beyond:
➢ Key changes in identity are more likely to take place in emerging adulthood—or later—
than in adolescence.
➢ College can have significant effects, including increased complexity in reasoning and a
wide range of new experiences.
➢ Note that identity does not remain stable throughout life.
○ Many follow “M A M A” cycles: from moratorium to achievement to moratorium
to achievement.
○ The first identity should not be expected to be the final product.
➢ Cultural and ethnic identity:
➢ Identity development is influenced by culture and ethnicity.
➢ Ethnic identity: an enduring aspect of the self that includes a sense of membership in an
ethnic group and the attitudes and feelings related to that membership.
➢ Many adolescents develop a bicultural identity, based on both their ethnic group and the
majority culture.
➢ Pride in one’s ethnic identity group and a strong ethnic identity and connection has
positive outcomes.
○ Influenced by positive and diverse friendships.
➢ Identity development and the digital environment:
➢ Social media platforms have introduced ways for youth to express and explore their
identity, casting themselves as positive on their digital devices.
○ Post attractive photos and videos of themselves, friends, and family.
○ Describe themselves in idealistic ways.
○ Continually edit and rework their online self-portraits.
➢ These platforms provide the opportunity for public feedback—which, as in the offline
world, is not always positive.

❖ Religious/spiritual development.
➢ Although important to many, religious interest among adolescents has declined in
the twenty-first century.
○ Assessed in terms of frequency of prayer, discussion of teachings, and deciding
moral actions for religious reasons, along with the overall importance of religion
in everyday life.
➢ Adolescent girls are more religious than are adolescent boys.
➢ Emerging adults in less developed countries are more likely to be religious than their
counterparts in more developed countries.
➢ Cognitive development and religion in adolescence:
○ More so than in childhood, adolescents think abstractly, idealistically, and
logically.
○ The increase in abstract thinking lets adolescents consider various ideas about
religious and spiritual concepts.
○ Increased idealistic thinking provides a foundation for considering religion’s role
in a better world.
○ An increased capacity for logical reasoning enables them to develop hypotheses
and sort through answers to spiritual questions.
➢ The positive role of religion in adolescents’ lives:
➢ Religion plays a role in adolescents’ health and has an influence on whether they engage
in problem behaviors.
○ Research links religiosity or spirituality to a decreased likelihood of engaging in
substance use and to positive health outcomes.
○ In one study, spirituality but not religiosity was linked to higher life satisfaction.
➢ Many religious adolescents adopt their religion’s message about caring and concern for
people.
○ Increased likelihood of engaging in community service.

★ Families.
❖ Parental monitoring and information management.
➢ A key aspect of the managerial role of parenting is effective monitoring.
○ Supervising adolescents’ choice of social settings, activities, and friends.
○ Supervising academic efforts.
➢ Higher levels of monitoring and rule enforcement are linked to:
○ Engaging later in sex and using condoms.
○ Getting more sleep.
○ Better health behavior in adolescence and college.
➢ A current interest focuses on adolescents’ management of their parents’ access to
information.
○ Disclosing or concealing information about their activities.
➢ When parents engage in positive parenting practices, adolescents are more likely to
disclose information.
➢ This disclosure is linked to positive adolescent adjustment.
➢ Adolescents who engage in problem behaviors are more secretive and disclose less to
parents.

❖ Autonomy and attachment.

➢ Parents must weigh competing needs for autonomy and control, for independence and
connection.
➢ The push for autonomy may puzzle and frustrate some parents.
➢ Adolescents often have a strong desire to make their own decisions—and to spend time
with friends.
○ Adolescents’ ability to attain autonomy is acquired through appropriate adult
reactions to their desire for control.
○ When given autonomy, teens feel they have more independence and a better
parental relationship.
○ Boys are typically given more independence.
○ Cultural diversity in timing and roles must also be considered.
➢ The role of attachment:
➢ Securely attached adolescents are less likely to have emotional difficulties and to engage
in problem behaviors, juvenile delinquency, and drug abuse.
➢ Balancing freedom and control:
➢ Adolescents still need to stay connected with their family.
○ For example, those who do not eat with a parent on most days have higher rates of
substance use.
❖ Parent-adolescent conflict.
➢ Parent-adolescent conflict increases in early adolescence, but much of it involves the
everyday events of family life.
○ Rarely major dilemmas.
➢ Such conflicts may serve a positive developmental function by facilitating the transition
to greater autonomy.
➢ Parents are important attachment figures and support systems while adolescents explore a
more complex social world.
➢ When conflict is prolonged and intense, it is associated with various problems, many of
them serious.
➢ Some conflict is especially likely between immigrant parents and their adolescents as
adolescents quickly adapt to new norms.

★ Peers.
❖ Friendships.
➢ Most teens prefer a smaller number of friendships that are more intense and more
intimate.
➢ Friends become increasingly important in meeting social needs.
➢ Developmental advantages occur when friends are:
○ Socially skilled.
○ Supportive.
○ Oriented toward academic achievement.
➢ Developmental disadvantages are more likely with:
○ Coercive friends who encourage drinking.
○ Conflict-ridden, poor-quality friendships.

❖ Peer groups.
➢ Social media and peer relations:
➢ Five ways social media use transforms adolescent peer relationships:
○ Changing the frequency or immediacy of their experiences.
○ Amplifying their experiences and demands.
○ Altering the qualitative aspects of their interactions.
○ Facilitating new opportunities for their compensatory behaviors.
○ Creating completely novel behaviors.
➢ Peer pressure:
➢ Young adolescents conform more to peer standards than children.
○ Boys are more influenced by peer pressure involving sexual behavior than girls.
○ Adolescents with low self-esteem and high social anxiety are most likely to
conform to peers and during transitions (for example, a new school).
➢ Cliques and crowds:
➢ Clique: a small group of about five or six individuals that may form among adolescents
who engage in similar activities.
○ May also form because of friendship.
➢ Crowd: a larger group structure that is usually based on reputation.
○ Members may or may not spend much time together.
○ Most are defined by the activities adolescents engage in— that is, “jocks” and
“druggies.”
➢ The appearance of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2020 quickly affected the ways
friendship and peer relations take place.
➢ Social distancing—maintaining a distance of 6 feet or more from others—may for some
increase feelings of social isolation.
➢ In this respect, the dramatic increase in social media use may prove to be of great value,
allowing adolescents to stay connected with friends and peers online.

❖ Dating and romantic relationships.

➢ Developmental changes in dating and romantic relationships:
➢ Three stages characterize the development of romantic relationships in adolescence:
○ Entry into romantic attractions and affiliations at about 11 to 13 years of age.
○ Exploring romantic relationships at approximately 14 to 16 years of age, often
through casual dating and dating in groups.
○ Consolidating dyadic romantic bonds at about 17 to 19 years of age.
➢ Two variations are considered early bloomers and late bloomers.
➢ Dating in gay and lesbian youth:
○ Many date other-sex peers, which can help clarify their sexual orientation or
disguise it from others.
○ Most gay and lesbian youth have had some same-sex experience, often with peers
who are “experimenting.”
➢ Sociocultural contexts and dating:
○ Cultures, values, beliefs, and traditions often dictate the age at which dating
begins, how much freedom is allowed, whether dates must be chaperoned, and the
roles of males and females.
○ Dating can be a source of conflict in families, especially if parents grew up in a
culture where little freedom is allowed.
➢ Dating and adjustment:
➢ Experiencing romantic encounters can increase social acceptance, friendship competence,
and romantic competence.
➢ Supportive romantic relationships can improve the likelihood of positive outcomes for
adolescents experiencing conflict in other parts of their lives.
➢ Having more romantic relationships can also have negative implications.
○ Higher levels of substance use, delinquency, and sexual behavior.
○ In girls, depression and pregnancy.
★ Culture and Adolescent Development.
❖ Cross-cultural comparisons.
➢ Depending on the culture, adolescence may involve many different experiences.
➢ Health: Overall, fewer adolescents die from infectious diseases and malnutrition today;
but health-compromising behaviors are increasing in frequency.
➢ Gender: The experiences of boys and girls continue to be quite different.
○ In much of the world, males have far greater access to education, a variety of
careers, and leisure activities.
○ Far more restrictions are placed on the sexual activity of adolescent females than
on that of males.
○ Differences are narrowing over time, however.
➢ Family: In some countries, families are close-knit and have extensive kin networks; but
current trends of mobility and migration are bringing change.
○ Countries like the United States are seeing greater numbers of divorced families
and stepfamilies.
➢ Peers: In some regions, peer relations are restricted (especially for girls); in others, the
peer network can serve as surrogate family.
➢ Activities: U.S. adolescents have far more discretionary time than adolescents in other
industrialized countries.
○ When given a choice, they typically engage in unchallenging activities such as
hanging out and watching TV.
➢ Rites of passage:
➢ Some societies have elaborate ceremonies that signal the adolescent’s move to maturity
and achievement of adult status—commonly referred to as a rite of passage.
○ Often characterized by some form of ritual death and rebirth.
➢ American culture does not have universal formal ceremonies, but some religious and
social groups have initiation ceremonies.
○ For example, the Jewish bar and bat mitzvah and the Catholic confirmation.
○ School graduation may be the most culture-wide rite of passage in the United
States.

❖ Socioeconomic status and poverty.

➢ Adolescents from low-income and impoverished families are at greater risk for low
academic achievement, emotional problems, and lower occupational attainment.
○ Psychological problems and physical illness are also more prevalent among low-S
E S adolescents.
➢ The following factors appear to improve academic achievement for children living
in poverty:
○ greater academic commitment;
○ emotional control;
 ○ family involvement; and
○ a supportive school climate

❖ Ethnicity.
➢ Immigration:
➢ Immigrants often experience stressors uncommon to or less prominent among long-time
residents.
○ Language barriers.
○ Dislocations and separations from support networks.
○ The dual struggle to preserve identity and to acculturate.
○ Changes in socioeconomic status.
➢ Many individuals in immigrant families are also dealing with the problem of being
undocumented.
➢ The ways ethnic minority families deal with stress depend on many different factors.
➢ Ethnicity and socioeconomic status:
➢ Ethnicity and S E S can interact in ways that exaggerate the influence of ethnicity,
because ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the lower-S E S levels of American
society.
➢ Thus, many ethnic minority adolescents experience a double disadvantage:
○ Prejudice, discrimination, and bias because of their ethnic minority status.
○ Stressful effects of poverty.
➢ Economic advantage among middle-income ethnic minority youth does not mean they
escape prejudice, discrimination, and bias.

❖ Media use and screen time.

➢ Screen time includes how much time individuals spend watching TV or D V D s, playing
video games, and using computers or mobile media devices.
○ Nighttime mobile phone use and poor sleep behavior increases from 13 to 16
years of age.
○ Among both girls and boys, heavy users of digital media are twice as likely to
have low psychological well-being.
➢ The more screen time adolescents have, the more their academic achievement suffers.
➢ One major trend is the dramatic increase in media multitasking, which at a general level
is distracting and impairs performance on many tasks.
➢ Technology and digitally mediated communication:
➢ Mobile media such as smartphones are mainly driving the increased media use by
adolescents.
➢ A national survey also revealed dramatic increases in adolescents’ use of social media
and text messaging.
○ In 2019, 15- to 17-year-olds spent an average of three hours and four minutes
each day engaging in screen time (Livingston, 2019).
➢ Less screen time has been linked to better health-related quality of life among
adolescents.
➢ Text messaging is the preferred method of contact with friends, while voice mail is used
to connect with parents.

★ Adolescent Problems.
❖ Juvenile delinquency.
➢ Juvenile delinquent: an adolescent who breaks the law or engages in behavior that is
considered illegal.
➢ Delinquency rates:
○ Males are more likely to engage in delinquency than females.
○ Rates among minority groups and lower-S E S youth are especially high.
➢ Causes of delinquency:
○ Lower-S E S culture.
○ Parents less skilled in discouraging antisocial behavior.
○ Siblings and delinquent peers.

❖ Depression and suicide.

➢ Depression:
➢ Factors contributing to depression:
○ Genes.
○ Certain family factors.
○ Poor peer relationships.
➢ Treatment of depression:
○ Drug therapy using serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
○ Cognitive behavioral therapy.
○ Interpersonal therapy.
➢ In the United States, suicide is now the third-leading cause of death in 10- to 19-year-
olds.
➢ Adolescents contemplate or attempt it unsuccessfully more often than they actually
commit it.
➢ Females are more likely to attempt suicide, but males are more likely to succeed.
➢ Risk factors for suicide:
○ History of family instability and unhappiness.
○ Lack of supportive friendships.
○ Cultural contexts and genetic factors.
○ Depressive symptoms.

❖ The interrelation of problems and successful prevention/intervention programs.

➢ The four problems that affect the most adolescents are:
○ Drug abuse.
 ○ Juvenile delinquency.
○ Sexual problems.
○ School-related problems.
➢ A review of the programs that have been successful in preventing or reducing
adolescent problems found these common components:
○ Intensive individualized attention.
○ Community-wide multiagency collaborative approaches.
○ Early identification and intervention.

CHAPTER 13 - PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY

ADULTHOOD

★ The Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood.

❖ Becoming an adult.
➢ Emerging adulthood: the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
■ Occurs from approximately 18 to 25 years of age.
■ Characterized by experimentation and exploration.
➢ Key features:
■ Identity exploration, especially in love and work.
■ Instability.
■ Self-focus.
■ Feeling in-between.
■ The age of possibilities, a time when individuals have an opportunity to
transform their lives.
➢ The changing landscape of emerging and early adulthood:
➢ Parents can play an important role in guiding and preparing adolescents for
emerging adulthood.
■ Provide them with opportunities to be contributors.
■ Give candid, constructive, and quality feedback to adolescents.
■ Create positive adult connections, helping them learn to handle autonomy
maturely.
■ Challenge adolescents to become more competent.
➢ Markers of becoming an adult:
■ Holding a full-time job.
■ Economic independence.
■ Taking responsibility for oneself.
❖ The transition from high school to college.
➢ The top-dog phenomenon replays after high school and movement to a larger,
more impersonal school structure.
➢ For many, this includes:
➢ Interaction with peers from more diverse geographical and ethnic backgrounds.
➢ An increased focus on achievement and its assessment.
➢ Positive features include intellectual challenges, time with peers, different
lifestyles, and greater independence.
➢ Negative features include higher levels of stress and depression.

★ Physical Development.

❖ Physical performance and development.

➢ Peak physical performance typically occurs before the age of 30.
■ Often between 19 and 26.
■ Different types of athletes reach their peak at different ages.
➢ Muscle tone and strength usually begin to decline around the age of 30, and
sagging chins and protruding abdomens begin to appear.

❖ Health.
➢ Emerging adults have more than twice the mortality rate of adolescents.
■ More chronic health problems.
■ Engage in more health-compromising behaviors.
■ More likely to be obese.
■ More likely to have a mental disorder than adolescents.

❖ Eating and weight.

➢ Obesity:
■ Being overweight or obese is linked to increased risk of hypertension,
diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
■ It is also associated with mental health problems, especially depression.
■ Factors involved in obesity:
● Heredity.
● Environmental factors—especially, the greater availability of food,
and declining physical activity.
➢ Dieting:
■ Dieting has become an obsession with many Americans.
■ Though they often embark on diets, few are successful in keeping weight
off in the long term.
■ The most effective programs include exercise.
 ● Higher levels of physical activity, especially endurance training,
are linked to weight loss maintenance.
● Diet-plus-exercise programs produce greater weight loss than diet-
only programs.
● Exercise, planning meals, and daily weigh-ins are successful
strategies.
➢ Binge eating disorder (B E D): frequent binge eating but without compensatory
behavior like the purging that characterizes bulimics.
■ Individuals with B E D are frequently overweight.
■ Far more common in females.
■ Biological and psychological factors:
● Genes.
● The neurotransmitter dopamine.
● Families with ineffective emotional involvement.
➢ Cognitive behavior therapy and pharmacological treatments have been successful.

❖ Regular exercise.
➢ Exercise helps prevent chronic disorders.
➢ Aerobic exercise: sustained exercise that stimulates heart and lung activity.
➢ Exercise benefits both physical and mental health (for example, anxiety and
depression).
➢ Strategies:
■ Reduce screen time; replace some of it with exercise.
■ Chart your progress.
■ Get rid of excuses.
■ Imagine the alternative—if you were to lose your health.

❖ Substance abuse.
➢ Addiction: the overwhelming involvement with using a drug and a preoccupation
with securing its supply.
➢ Alcohol:
■ Binge drinking: having five or more drinks in a row at least once in the
last two weeks.
■ Extreme binge drinking: having 10 to 15 or more drinks in a row in the
last two weeks.
■ Pregaming: getting drunk before going out and socializing.
■ Alcoholism: long-term, repeated, uncontrolled, compulsive, and excessive
alcohol use impairing the user’s health and relationships.
➢ Cigarette smoking and nicotine:
■ Smoking is linked to cancer deaths, heart disease deaths, and chronic
pulmonary disease deaths.
 ■ As with adolescents, there has been a recent increase in the use of e-
cigarettes among individuals in early adulthood.
■ Though most adult smokers would like to quit, addiction to nicotine makes
quitting challenging.
● Nicotine stimulates neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, that
have a calming or pain-reducing effect.
➢ Marijuana:
■ Marijuana use among college students has increased dramatically in recent
years.
■ Vaping of marijuana is also rapidly increasing among college students.

★ Sexuality.

❖ Sexual activity in emerging adulthood.

➢ At the beginning of emerging adulthood, slightly more than 60 percent have
experienced sexual intercourse.
➢ By the end of emerging adulthood (age 25), most have had sexual intercourse.
➢ Casual sex is more common in emerging adulthood.
■ “Hooking up”: nonrelationship sex, from kissing to intercourse.
■ “Friends-with-benefits (F W B)”: a casual sex relationship that integrates
friendship and sexual intimacy without an explicit commitment.
➢ Predictors of risky heterosexual behavior, such as engaging in casual and
unprotected sex:
■ Males engage in more risk factors than females, with females being more
selective in their choice of partner.
■ Individuals who became sexually active in adolescence engage in more
risky sexual behaviors in emerging adulthood.
■ Those without a high school diploma have more casual sex partners than
those in college or who have graduated from college.
■ Alcohol makes casual sex more likely; and alcohol decreases the
likelihood that partners will discuss possible risks.

❖ Sexual orientation and behavior.

➢ Men have slightly more sexual experience and more permissive attitudes than
women for most aspects of sexuality.
➢ Black American males have more permissive sexual attitudes than non–Latino
White, Latino, and Asian males.
■ No ethnic differences were found among females.
➢ Although sexual risk taking is important to consider, it is also important to
understand that research strongly supports the role of sexual activity in well-
being.
 ➢ Sources of sexual orientation:
■ In a recent national survey, 3.8 percent of U.S. adults report being gay,
lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual.
■ Sexual orientation is generally seen as a continuum from exclusive
heterosexual relations to exclusive same-sex relations.
■ Some people are bisexual, with evidence supporting bisexuality as a stable
orientation.
■ Sexual orientation is most likely determined by a combination of genetic,
hormonal, cognitive, and environmental factors.
■ Whether heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual, a person cannot be talked
out of their sexual orientation.
➢ Attitudes and behavior of lesbians and gays:
■ Many gender differences that appear in heterosexual relationships also
occur in same-sex relationships.
■ Lesbians have fewer sexual partners and less permissive attitudes about
casual sex than gay men.
■ Hate crimes and stigma-related experiences are a special concern.

❖ Sexually transmitted infections.

➢ Sexually transmitted infections (S T Is) are diseases primarily spread through
sexual contact.
■ Among the most prevalent bacterial infections: gonorrhea, syphilis, and
chlamydia.
■ Among the most prevalent caused by viruses: genital herpes, genital warts,
and human immunodeficiency virus (H I )V).
➢ The H I V destroys the body’s immune system, leading to acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease of devastating global reach.
■ In the United States, 1.2 million people were living with H I V in 2019.
■ Deaths due to AIDS have begun to decline in the United States.
➢ Strategies for protecting against H I V and other STIs include the following:
■ Know your risk status and that of your partner.
■ Obtain medical examinations.
■ Have protected, not unprotected, sex.
■ Do not have sex with multiple partners.
● Having more than one sexual partner elevates the likelihood that
you will encounter an infected partner.
❖ Forcible sexual behavior and sexual harassment.
➢ Rape: forcible sexual intercourse with a person, female or male, who does not
give consent.
■ Sixty percent of rape victims, especially college students, do not
acknowledge it.
■ Nearly 200,000 rapes are reported per year in the United States.
➢ Among the likely causes:
 ■ Males are socialized to be sexually aggressive, to regard women as
inferior, and to consider their pleasure first.
■ Male characteristics include aggression enhancing their sense of power,
general anger toward women, a desire to hurt and humiliate, and high
sexual narcissism.
■ Rape is more likely when alcohol is involved.
➢ Victims of rape may experience depression, fear, anxiety, post-traumatic stress
disorder, increased substance use, and suicidal thoughts.
■ Recovery depends on coping abilities, psychological adjustment prior to
the assault, and social support.
➢ Date or acquaintance rape: coercive sexual activity directed at someone with
whom the perpetrator is at least casually acquainted.
■ Two-thirds of female college freshmen report having been date raped or
having experienced attempted date rape.
■ About two-thirds of college men admit to fondling women against their
will; half to forcing sexual activity.
➢ Sexual harassment is a manifestation of power of one person over another.
■ Forms range from inappropriate sexual remarks and physical contact to
blatant propositions and sexual assaults.

★ Cognitive Development.

❖ Cognitive stages.
➢ In Piaget’s view, formal operational thought is the final stage in cognitive
development, and it characterizes adults as well as adolescents.
■ Young adults are more quantitatively advanced, in that they have more
knowledge than adolescents.
■ Adults especially increase their knowledge in a specific area.
➢ Some developments theorize that while adolescents plan and hypothesize, young
adults become more systematic and sophisticated at this process.
➢ Even many adults do not think in formal operational ways.
➢ Some theorists propose a fifth, postformal stage.
➢ Postformal thought is thinking that is:
■ Reflective, relativistic, and contextual.
■ Provisional.
■ Realistic.
■ Recognized as being influenced by emotion.
➢ Wisdom and meaning are important developments.
➢ Creativity:
■ Researchers have found that creativity peaks in adulthood—often in the
forties—and then declines.
 ➢ Qualifying any conclusion about age and creative accomplishments are:
■ Questions about the magnitude of the decline in productivity.
■ Contrasts across creative domains.
■ Individual differences in lifetime output.
➢ An impressive array of creative accomplishments can occur in late adulthood.

★ Achievement, Careers, and Work.

❖ Achievement.
➢ Important aspects of achievement in children’s lives continue to be important in
adults’ achievement.
➢ Self-efficacy: the belief one can master a situation to potentially produce
favorable outcomes.
➢ Mindset: the cognitive view individuals develop for themselves.
■ Growth mindset: people can improve through effort; linked to success
and achievement.
■ Fixed mindset: qualities are carved in stone.
➢ Delay of gratification: engaging in self-control by waiting until late to obtain
something more valuable rather than immediately seeking satisfaction with
something less valuable.
➢ Motivation:
■ Extrinsic motivation: involves doing something to obtain something else.
■ Intrinsic motivation: doing something for its own sake; involves factors
such as self-determination and opportunities to make choices.
➢ Goal setting, planning, and self-monitoring:
■ Set both long-term and short-term goals.
■ Set challenging goals.
■ Plan how to reach goals, and monitor progress.
➢ Grit:
➢ Grit is passion and persistence in achieving long-term goals.
➢ Research indicates that grit is linked to academic engagement and achieving
success.
➢ To determine if you have grit:
■ Do I push myself to be my best?
■ Do I work hard to reach goals, no matter how long it takes?
■ Once I set a goal, do I strive to overcome challenges?
■ How passionate am I about the work I am doing?
❖ Developmental changes in careers.
➢ From the mid-twenties on, many individuals seek to establish their emerging
career in a particular field.
 ➢ According to Phyllis Moen, there is a career mystique—an ingrained cultural
belief that engaging in hard work for long hours through adulthood will lead to
status, security, and happiness.
■ This has never been a reality for many people.
■ Global outsourcing, rapid technological change, and the effects of
recession have increasingly limited options and security.

❖ Finding a path to purpose.

➢ Only about 20 percent of young people have a clear vision of where they want to
go in life.
➢ How to reflect on purpose:
■ What’s most important to you in your life?
■ Why do you care about those things?
■ Do you have any long-term goals?
■ Why are these goals important to you?
■ What does it mean to have a good life?
■ What does it mean to be a good person?
■ How would you like to be remembered?

❖ Monitoring the occupational outlook.

➢ Changing economic conditions affect what occupations are open to us year after
year.
➢ An excellent resource is the U.S. government’s Occupational Outlook Handbook,
which is revised every two years.
➢ Protected job growth varies widely by educational requirements.
■ Most of the highest-paying occupations require a college degree.

❖ The impact of work.

➢ Work defines people in fundamental ways.
➢ This is not surprising, since most people spend about one-third of their lives at
work.
➢ One trend in the United States is the disappearing long-term career, especially
men in private-sector jobs.
➢ An important consideration is how stressful the work is:
■ Stress can have significant implications for health.
■ Current policies and practices in the workplace are often out of step with a
workforce of women and men, and of single parents and dual earners.
■ Workers want flexibility and greater control over their schedules.
➢ Work during college:
■ The percentage of full-time U.S. college students who also hold jobs has
been on the increase.
 ■ Working can offset some of the costs of schooling, but it can also impair
learning.
● As the number of hours worked per week increases, grades suffer.
➢ Jobs can also enhance education.
■ Cooperative (co-op) programs.
■ Internships relevant to the field of study.
➢ Unemployment:
➢ Unemployment or underemployment produces stress.
■ Physical problems, such as heart attack and stroke.
■ Substance abuse.
■ Emotional problems, such as depression and anxiety.
■ Marital difficulties.
■ Homicide.
➢ Recovery of a sense of well-being is often rapid upon return to work, even when
the employment is less than favorable.
➢ Dual-earner couples:
■ Dual-earner couples may face special challenges in balancing work and
family life.
■ As U.S. women took jobs outside the home, the division of responsibility
for work and family did change:
● Men did more for maintaining the home.
● Women took more responsibility for breadwinning.
● Men showed greater interest in the family and parenting.
➢ Women still earn less in the same jobs, however; and this can influence gender
inequalities in the home.
CHAPTER 14 - SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY
ADULTHOOD

★ Stability and Change from Childhood to Adulthood.

❖ Temperament.
➢ Recall that temperament is an individual’s behavioral style and characteristic
emotional responses.
➢ In young adulthood, most individuals show fewer emotional mood swings,
become more responsible, and engage in less risk-taking behavior.
➢ Some dimensions of childhood temperament appear to be linked with adult
personality.
■ Children with an easy versus difficult temperament are more likely to be
well adjusted as young adults.
 ■ Inhibition is linked to less assertiveness and social support, while
disinhibition predicts self-efficacy.
■ The ability to control emotions is linked with resilience.

❖ Attachment.
➢ Romantic partners fulfill some of the same needs for adults as parents do for their
children.
■ Adults may count on romantic partners to be a secure base to which they
can return and obtain comfort and security.
➢ Consistently positive caregiving over a number of years is likely an important
factor in connecting early attachment with functioning later in development.
■ Secure attachment style: adults who have positive views of relationships,
find it easy to get close to others, and are not overly concerned or stressed
out about their romantic relationships.
■ Avoidant attachment style: adults who are hesitant about getting
involved in romantic relationships and once in a relationship tend to
distance themselves from their partner.
■ Anxious attachment style: adults who demand closeness, are less
trusting, and are more emotional, jealous, and possessive.
■ The majority of adults describe themselves as securely attached and prefer
having a securely attached partner.

★ Love and Close Relationships.

❖ The faces of love.
➢ Intimacy:
■ Self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts are hallmarks of
intimacy.
■ According to Erikson, in early adulthood individuals enter the sixth
developmental stage, intimacy versus isolation.
● Intimacy is finding oneself while losing oneself in another person.
● Failure to achieve intimacy results in social isolation.
➢ Research reveals that identity development in adolescence is a precursor to
intimacy in emerging adulthood.
➢ Friendship:
■ Increasingly researchers are finding friendship plays an important role in
development throughout the life span.
■ Most U.S. men and women have a best friend of the same sex.
■ Adulthood brings opportunities for new friendships as individuals move to
new locations and start new jobs.
➢ Romantic love:
 ■ Some friendships evolve into romantic love—also called passionate love,
or eros, with very strong components of sexuality and infatuation.
● Characterized by a complex intermingling of emotions: passion,
fear, anger, sexual desire, joy, and jealousy.
➢ Affectionate love:
■ Love is more than just passion.
■ Affectionate love, or companionate love, occurs when someone desires
to have the other person near and has a deep, caring affection for the other
person.
➢ Consummate love:
■ Robert J. Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of love, with three main
dimensions: passion, intimacy, and commitment.
■ For Sternberg, consummate love involves all three dimensions and is the
fullest form of love.
● When there is only passion, it is merely infatuation.
● When there is intimacy and commitment but no passion, it is
affectionate love.
● If there is passion and commitment but no intimacy, it is fatuous
love.
➢ Cross-cultural variations in romantic relationships:
■ In China and Korea, intimacy is more diffused, with more emphasis on
connections outside of romantic relationships.
■ Japan’s marriage rate is dropping.
■ In France and Brazil, you will find the most passionate, most romantic
interest.
● France has the most extramarital affairs.
■ In Qatar, casual dating is forbidden, and public displays of affection can
be punished with incarceration.
● Young adults use social media and the Internet to arrange private
co-ed get-togethers at hotels.
➢ Relationship education for adolescents and emerging adults:
■ Traditionally, such programs have focused on helping committed adult
couples strengthen their relationships.
■ Recently, programs have been developed for adolescents and emerging
adults.
■ Relationship education consists of interventions to provide individuals
and couples with information and skills that produce positive romantic
relationships and marriages.
● Skills include interpersonal communication, problem-solving and
conflict strategies, and self-regulation.
❖ Falling out of love.
➢ The collapse of a close relationship can feel tragic; but sometimes our happiness
and personal development benefit.
➢ This is especially true if:
■ You are obsessed with a person who repeatedly betrays your trust.
■ You are involved with someone who is draining you emotionally or
financially—or both.
■ You are desperately in love with someone who does not return your
feelings.

★ Adult Lifestyles.
❖ Single adults.
➢ Stereotypes associated with being single range from extremes of glad to be single
to being in despair.
■ Most are somewhere between these extremes.
➢ Advantages of being single:
■ Time to make decisions about one’s own life course.
■ Time to develop personal resources.
■ Freedom to make autonomous decisions and pursue one’s own schedule
and interests.
■ Opportunities to explore new places and try out new things.
■ Privacy.
➢ Men have become more interested in love, marriage, and children than men in
earlier generations.
➢ Women desire more independence, personal space, and time on their own and
with friends.
➢ U.S. singles report an interest in fast sex and slow love:
■ One-night stands, sex before a first date, and friends-with-benefits
relationships.
■ Taking far longer to commit to love and marriage—though they still
express a strong interest in finding romantic love.
❖ Cohabiting adults.
➢ Cohabitation refers to living together in a sexual relationship without being
married.
➢ Some couples view cohabitation not as a precursor to marriage but as an ongoing
lifestyle.
■ Spend time together, share expenses, and evaluate compatibility.
➢ Couples who cohabit do face certain problems.
■ Disapproval of family.
■ Limited legal rights.
■ Potential impacts on later marriage.
❖ Married adults.
➢ The changing norm of male-female equality in marriage and increasingly high
expectations has produced relationships that are more fragile and intense than in
earlier generations.
➢ Some characteristics of marital partners predict whether a marriage will last
longer:
■ Education: both women and men with a bachelor’s degree are more likely
to delay marriage but also more likely to get married and stay married for
more than 20 years.
■ Ethnicity: Asian American women are the most likely to be in a first
marriage that lasted at least 20 years.
➢ Marital trends:
■ Marriage rates in the United States have declined—although the United
States remains a marrying society.
■ The age at which individuals get married is going up in the United States
and many other countries around the world.
■ Emerging and young adults continue to view marriage as a very important
life pursuit—more important than parenting, careers, or leisure activities.
■ Individuals’ top reason for getting married is love.
■ Marriages in adolescence are more likely to end in divorce.
■ The average duration of marriage in the United States is currently around
nine years.
➢ Cross-cultural comparisons:
■ Aspects of marriage vary across cultures.
■ Domesticity is valued in some cultures but not others.
■ Religion plays an important role in many cultures.
➢ Premarital education:
■ Focuses on relationship advice.
■ Can occur in a group setting.
■ Ranges from several hours to 20 hours (median 8 hours).
■ Lowers risk of subsequent marital distress and divorce.
➢ The benefits of a good marriage:
■ Happily married people live longer, healthier lives and feel less physical
and emotional stress.
■ The experience of divorce or separation confers risk for poor health
outcomes, including a 23 percent higher mortality rate.

❖ Divorced adults.
➢ In the United States, nearly half of first marriages will break up within 20 years.
➢ Some groups have a higher incidence of divorce:
 ■ Youthful marriage.
■ Low educational level.
■ Low income.
■ Not having a religious affiliation.
■ Having parents who are divorced.
■ Having a baby before marriage.
➢ The following characteristics of one partner also increase the likelihood of
divorce:
■ Alcoholism.
■ Psychological problems.
■ Domestic violence.
■ Infidelity.
■ Inadequate division of household labor.
➢ The following characteristics of one partner also increase the likelihood of
divorce:
➢ Alcoholism.
➢ Psychological problems.
➢ Domestic violence.
➢ Infidelity.
➢ Inadequate division of household labor.
➢ Divorced adults have higher rates of:
■ Depression and anxiety.
■ Physical illnesses.
■ Suicide.
■ Motor vehicle accidents.
■ Alcoholism.
■ Mortality.
➢ Although divorce has more a negative economic impact on women, women show
better rates of adjustment and are more likely to perceive divorce as a “second
chance.”

❖ Remarried adults.
➢ The remarriage rate in the United States has declined in recent decades.
➢ Men are more likely to remarry.
➢ Remarriage occurs sooner for the partners who initiated the divorce.
➢ Remarried adults often find it difficult to stay remarried.
■ The divorce rate of remarriages continues to increase.
■ Many remarry not for love but for financial reasons, for help in raising
children, and to reduce loneliness.
■ They may carry with them negative patterns from an earlier marriage; and
they face more stress in rearing children.
❖ LGBTQ adults.
➢ Gay and lesbian relationships are similar to heterosexual relationships in
satisfaction and conflict.
➢ A recent study indicated that adults in same-sex relationships were experiencing
levels of commitment, satisfaction, and emotional intimacy similar to those of
adults in different-sex relationships (Joyner, Manning, & Prince, 2019).

★ Marriage and the Family.

❖ Making marriage work.
➢ Gottman’s seven practices of a working marriage:
■ Establish love maps.
■ Nurture fondness and admiration.
■ Turn toward each other instead of away.
■ Let your partner influence you.
■ Solve solvable conflicts.
■ Overcome gridlock.
■ Create shared meaning.
➢ Such factors as forgiveness and commitment are important.
➢ For remarried couples, strategies include the following:
■ Have realistic expectations.
■ Develop new positive relationships within the family.
■ Counter set relationship patterns or “ghosts”—certain interaction patterns
from a previous relationship that can continue to haunt the individual.
❖ Becoming a parent.
➢ These are myths about parenting:
■ The birth of a child will save a failing marriage.
■ As a possession or extension of the parent, the child will think, feel, and
behave as the parent did in their childhood.
■ Having a child gives the parents a “second chance” at achievement.
■ Parenting is instinctual and requires no training.
➢ There is little in the way of formal education for this task, but there are parent
educators who can help.
➢ Trends in childbearing:
■ The average age of first-time mothers in the United States is about 26.9
years old.
■ Those with a master’s degree or higher first become mothers at an older
age (30) than those with a high school diploma (24).
➢ U.S. women overall are having fewer children:
■ By giving birth to fewer children and reducing the demands of child care,
women free a significant portion of their life spans for other endeavors.
 ■ Men are apt to invest a greater amount of time in fathering.
■ Parental care is often supplemented by institutional care.

❖ Dealing with divorce.

➢ E. Mavis Hetherington found six common pathways men and women took
after divorce:
■ The enhancers: more often female; “grew more competent, well-adjusted,
and self-fulfilled” following divorce.
■ The good-enoughs: the largest group; some strengths, some weaknesses.
■ The seekers: motivated to find new mates as soon as possible.
■ The libertines: more casual sex, but often grew disillusioned and wanted
a stable relationship.
■ The competent loners: successful and active, with little interest in
sharing their lives.
■ The defeated.

★ Gender and Communication Styles, Relationships, and Classification.

❖ Gender and communication styles.
➢ Rapport talk: the language of conversation.
■ A way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.
■ Women prefer rapport talk.
➢ Report talk: a talk style designed to give information.
■ This category of communication includes public speaking.
■ Men prefer report talk.
❖ Gender and relationships.
➢ Women’s development:
■ Women place a high value on relationships and focus on nurturing
connections.
■ Often, they try to interact with others in ways that will foster the other
person’s development.
● Harriet Learner stresses the importance of the separate “I-ness”
of both persons in a relationship.
➢ Gender experts note that women are more relationship-oriented than men are, and
many suggest this should be valued more highly in our culture than it currently is.
➢ Men’s development:
➢ Men can experience considerable role strain in the areas of:
■ Health.
■ Male-female relationships.
■ Male-male relationships.
➢ Ron Levant recommends every man should become more “emotionally
intelligent” by:
 ■ Reexamining his beliefs about manhood.
■ Separating out the valuable aspects of the male role.
■ Getting rid of those parts that are destructive.
➢ Gender’s role in friendships:
■ Women tend to have closer, more supportive friendships.
■ Men tend to have more competitive friendships.
■ Cross-gender friendships can present both opportunities and problems.
● Learning about common feelings and interests and shared
characteristics about each other and each other’s genders.
● Different expectations and unclear sexual boundaries.

❖ Gender classification.
➢ Masculinity, femininity, and androgyny:
■ In recent decades masculinity and femininity have been seen less as a
continuum where more of one means less of another.
■ Individuals can have both masculine and feminine traits.
■ Androgyny: the presence of positive masculine and feminine
characteristics present in the same person.
➢ Transgender:
■ Transgender individuals adopt a gender identity that differs from the one
assigned to them at birth.
● Some elect to proceed with gender reassignment.

CHAPTER 15 – Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Adulthood

★ The Nature of Middle Adulthood.
❖ Changing midlife.
➢ Many of today’s 50-year-olds are in better shape, more alert, and more productive than
their 40-year-old counterparts from a generation or two earlier.
➢ As adults become older, their age identity is younger than their chronological age.
➢ An increasing percentage of the U.S. population is made up of middle-aged and older
adults.
➢ Although there are great positives to this stage of life, many physical aspects of life
decline, and rates of health problems increase

❖ Defining middle adulthood.

➢ Middle adulthood: the developmental period for adults ranging 40 to 45 years of age to
60 to 65 years of age.
➢ For many, it is a time of:
○ Declining physical skills and increasing responsibility.
 ○ Greater awareness of the young old polarity and of the shrinking amount of time
left in life.
○ Seeking to transmit something meaningful to the next generation.
○ Reaching and maintaining career satisfaction.
➢ The concept of gains (growth) and losses (decline) is important to the field of life-span
development.
➢ In middle adulthood, gains and losses as well as biological and sociocultural factors
balance each other.
➢ Late midlife (55 to 65) is likely to be characterized by:
○ Death of a parent.
○ The last child leaving the parental home.
○ Becoming a grandparent.
○ Preparation for and actual retirement.
★ Physical Development.
❖ Physical changes.
➢ Visible signs of physical changes:
○ Skin wrinkles and sags.
○ Age spots appear.
○ Hair thins and grays.
○ Nails thicken and become more brittle.
○ Teeth yellow.
➢ Since a youthful appearance is valued in many cultures, individuals in this period may
strive to make themselves look younger.
➢ Individuals lose height and gain weight.
➢ Obesity increases from early to middle adulthood.
○ Being overweight is a critical health problem, associated with shorter longevity
and increased risk of death due to cardiovascular disease.
➢ Changes also occur in strength, joints, and bones.
○ Sarcopenia: an age-related loss of muscle mass and strength.
○ Cushions for bone movement become less efficient, leading to joint stiffness and
more difficulty in movement.
○ Progressive bone loss begins slowly but accelerates with further aging—twice as
fast in women as in men.
➢ Vision and hearing:
○ Accommodation of the eye—the ability to focus and maintain an image on the
retina—declines most sharply between the ages of 40 and 59.
■ In particular, people begin having trouble viewing close objects.
➢ The eye’s blood supply also diminishes, which may decrease the visual field.
➢ Hearing can start to decline by age 40.
○ High-pitched sounds are typically lost first.
➢ Cardiovascular system:
 ○ High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease increase
considerably.
■ Linked to weight gain between ages 45 and 60.
■ Linked to an unhealthy diet in adolescence.
■ S E S factors play a role.
➢ Metabolic syndrome: characterized by hypertension, obesity, and insulin resistance, and
often leads to the onset of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
○ Exercise, weight control, and a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
can help.
➢ Lungs:
○ Lung tissue becomes less elastic around age 55, decreasing lung capacity.
○ Increased cardiorespiratory fitness during early adulthood is linked to better lung
health over time.
➢ Sleep:
○ Eight hours of sleep or more are necessary for optimal performance the next day.
○ Wakeful periods become more frequent in the forties, as do sleep-disordered
breathing and restless legs syndrome.
■ Ineffective immune system functioning is linked to less sleep.

❖ Chronic disorders.
➢ Chronic disorders: those characterized by a slow onset and a long duration.
○ Rare in early adulthood, increase in middle adulthood, and become common in
late adulthood.
➢ Overall, arthritis is the leading chronic disorder in middle age, followed by
hypertension.
➢ Men have a higher incidence of fatal chronic conditions.

❖ Mortality rates.
➢ Chronic diseases are now the main cause of death for individuals in middle adulthood.
➢ In middle age, many deaths are caused by a single, readily identifiable condition.
➢ Cancer continues to be the number one cause, followed by heart disease.
➢ Men have higher mortality rates than women for all the leading causes of death.

❖ Sexuality.
➢ Climacteric: a term that is used to describe the midlife transition—experienced by
women and men—in which fertility declines.
➢ Menopause: cessation of a woman’s menstrual periods, usually during the late forties or
early fifties.
○ Late menopause is linked with increased risk of breast cancer.
○ Perimenopause: a transitional period from normal menstrual periods to no
menstrual periods at all—over the course of up to 10 years.
➢ The loss of fertility is an important marker for women.
➢ In menopause, production of estrogen by the ovaries declines, producing uncomfortable
symptoms in some women—“hot flashes,” nausea, fatigue, and rapid heartbeat.
○ Cross-cultural studies reveal these symptoms are not universal.
○ Genetic, dietary, reproductive, and cultural factors may be involved.
➢ Until recently, hormone replacement therapy (H R T) was often prescribed as
treatment for menopausal side effects.
○ Augments the declining levels of reproductive hormone production by the
ovaries.
○ Consists of various forms of estrogen, usually in combination with a progestin.
➢ For short-term relief, the benefits may outweigh the risk.
➢ However, H R T has been linked to increased risk of breast cancer.
➢ Alternatives, especially exercise and mindfulness training, are increasingly
recommended.
➢ Hormonal changes in middle-aged men:
○ Most men do not lose their capacity to father children.
○ There is usually a modest decline in sexual hormone level
and activity.
■ Testosterone replacement therapy (T R T) can improve sexual
functioning, muscle strength, and bone health; but some research indicates
a link to increased risk of stroke.
➢ Erectile dysfunction, an inability to achieve and maintain an erection, affects about 50
percent of men 40 to 70 years of age.
○ The main treatment has been Viagra and similar drugs.
➢ Sexual attitudes and behavior:
○ Sexual activity occurs less frequently than in early adulthood.
○ Middle-aged men are more interested in sex than are middle-aged women.
○ Living with a spouse or partner makes the difference in terms of engaging in
sexual activity, especially for women over 40.
○ A person’s health is a key factor.

★ Cognitive Development.
❖ Intelligence.
➢ Fluid and crystallized intelligence:
➢ Crystallized intelligence: the accumulation of information and verbal skills.
○ Continues to increase in middle adulthood.
➢ Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason abstractly.
○ May begin to decline in middle adulthood.
➢ The Seattle Longitudinal Study:
 ○ Initiated by K. Warner Schaie, the study involves an extensive evaluation of
intellectual abilities during adulthood, assessing participants at seven-year
intervals from 19 56 to 2012.
■ Verbal comprehension.
■ Verbal memory.
■ Spatial orientation.
■ Inductive reasoning.
■ Perceptual speed.
➢ Participants were classified as “decliners,” “stable,” and “gainers” for number ability,
delayed recall, and word fluency.

❖ Information processing.
➢ Speed of information processing:
○ As seen in Schaie’s study, perceptual speed begins declining in early adulthood
and continues to do so in middle adulthood.
○ A common method of assessment is the reaction-time task.
■ Middle-aged adults are slower to push a button when a light appears.
➢ Research on possible causes involves different levels of analysis.
○ Cognitive.
○ Neuroanatomical.
○ Neurochemical.
➢ Memory:
○ Most experts conclude that memory does decline at some point during this period
of adult development.
○ Denise Park argues that in middle age, more time is needed to learn new
information.
■ In this view, working memory capacity becomes more limited in middle
age, possibly as a result of information overload that builds up over the
adult years.
➢ Memory decline is more likely when individuals don’t use effective memory strategies.
○ Organization and imagery, for example.
➢ Expertise:
○ Expertise takes a long time to attain and therefore often shows up more in middle
adulthood.
○ Certain strategies, within their domain, distinguish experts from novices:
■ Relying on accumulated experience.
■ Processing information automatically and analyze it more efficiently.
■ Better strategies and shortcuts.
■ More creativity and flexibility.
➢ Practical problem solving:
○ Everyday problem solving is another important aspect of cognition.
 ■ Improves between early adulthood to middle adulthood with the
accumulation of practical experience.
■ Performance begins to decrease at about 50 years of age.

★ Careers, Work, and Leisure.

❖ Work in midlife.
➢ The role of work is central during middle adulthood.
➢ In the United States, about 80.6 percent of people aged 45 to 54 years of age are
employed.
➢ Age-related declines do occur in some occupations, but for most jobs, no difference has
been found.
➢ The ability to work effectively may peak in this period, however.
➢ For many, midlife is a time of evaluation, assessment, and reflection about work and
what they want to do in the future.
➢ Premature retirement due to economic downturns and recession can result in insufficient
resources.
❖ Career challenges and changes.
➢ Challenges:
○ Globalization of work.
○ Rapid developments in information technologies.
○ Downsizing of organizations.
○ Early retirement.
○ Concerns about pensions and health care.
➢ Career changes in midlife:
○ Some are self-motivated.
○ Others are the consequence of losing one’s job.

❖ Leisure.
➢ Leisure refers to the pleasant times after work when individuals are free to pursue
activities and interests of their own choosing.
○ Not engaging in more leisure is one of Americans’ top six regrets in life.
➢ Constructive and fulfilling leisure activities can be an important part of preparing for
retirement.
➢ Those in occupations with fewer cognitive challenges who engage in physical and
cognitive challenges in retirement show less cognitive decline.
➢ Leisure also serves as a positive way of coping with stress.

★ Religion, Spirituality, and Meaning in Life.

❖ Religion, spirituality, and adult lives.
➢ Religion: an organized set of beliefs, practices, rituals, and symbols that increases an
individual’s connection to a sacred or transcendent other.
➢ Religiousness: the degree to which an individual is affiliated with an organized religion.
○ Participating in prescribed rituals and practices.
○ Feeling a sense of connection with its beliefs.
○ Involvement in a community of believers.
➢ Spirituality: the practice of experiencing something beyond oneself in a transcendent
manner.
○ Living in a way that benefits others and society.
➢ Religion and spirituality are powerful influences for some adults but hold little or no
significance for others.
○ In many cases the influence changes as people develop.
➢ In 2020, individuals reporting religious affiliation had decreased to just 47 percent—
representing less than half of the adult population for the first time since the question was
asked more than 80 years ago (Gallup, 2021).
➢ Women have consistently shown a stronger interest in religion and spirituality than men
have.

❖ Religion, spirituality, and health.

➢ Some cults and religious sects tend to encourage behaviors that can be damaging to
health, including ignoring medical advice.
➢ In the religious mainstream, however, religion appears to be positively linked to health.
➢ Various dimensions of religion and coping can help some individuals cope more
effectively with challenges in their lives.

❖ Meaning in life.
➢ Victor Frankl argued that examining the finiteness of our existence and the certainty of
death adds meaning to life.
➢ For Frankl, the three most distinct human qualities are spirituality, freedom, and
responsibility.
➢ It is in middle adulthood that individuals are faced with death more often and begin to ask
and evaluate:
○ Why they exist.
○ What they want from life.
○ What the meaning of their life might be.
➢ Having a sense of meaning can lead to clearer guidelines for living and motivation to care
for oneself and reach goals.
➢ Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs suggest this quest can be understood in terms of
main needs for meaning:
○ Need for purpose.
○ Need for values.
○ Need for a sense of efficacy.
○ Need for self-worth.
➢ Individuals who find a sense of meaning in life tend to be physically healthier and
happier.

CHAPTER 16 - Socioemotional Development in Middle Adulthood

★ Personality Theories and Adult Development.
❖ Stages of adulthood.
➢ Erikson’s stage of generativity versus stagnation:
➢ Generativity encompasses adults’ desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next
generation.
➢ Middle-aged adults can develop generativity in a number of ways:
○ Biological generativity.
○ Parental generativity.
○ Work generativity.
○ Cultural generativity.
➢ Levinson’s seasons of a man’s life:
○ Based on Daniel Levinson’s extensive interviews, the transition to middle
adulthood lasts about five years (ages 40 to 45).
○ The adult must come to grips with four major conflicts:
■ Being young versus being old.
■ Being destructive versus being constructive.
■ Being masculine versus being feminine.
■ Being attached to others versus being separated from them.
➢ Although the data included no women, Levinson reports that the crisis of middle age
holds for women as well as men.
➢ How pervasive are midlife crises?
○ George Vaillant’s “Grant Study” involved men in their early thirties and late
forties who had originally been interviewed as undergraduates.
➢ Vaillant concludes:
○ The forties are a decade of reassessing and recording truth about the adolescent
and adult years.
○ Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis.
➢ Adult development experts are virtually unanimous in their belief that midlife crises have
been exaggerated.
➢ Individual variations:
○ Middle-aged adults interpret, shape, alter, and give meaning to their lives.
○ In one-third of cases where individuals report experiencing a midlife crisis, it was
triggered by life events such as job loss, financial problems, or illness.
❖ The life-events approach.
➢ Contemporary life-events approach: how life events influence the individual’s
development depends not only on the life event but also on mediating factors, as well as
on:
○ The individual’s adaptation to the life event.
○ The life-stage context and the sociohistorical context.
➢ This approach offers valuable insights but does have drawbacks.
○ It may place too much emphasis on change, not adequately recognizing stability.
○ Rather than life’s major events, it may often be daily hassles or other factors that
are the primary sources of stress.

❖ Stress and personal control in midlife.

➢ According to Margie Lachman and colleagues, middle age is a time when a person’s
sense of control is frequently challenged.
○ Many demands and responsibilities.
○ Physical and cognitive aging.
➢ More attention is given to responsibility for others, including people both younger and
older than they are.
➢ Middle-aged adults can experience more overload stressors that involve juggling too
many activities at once.
➢ Some aspects of personal control increase with age, while others decrease.
➢ Stress and gender:
○ Women are more vulnerable to social stressors and more readily seek help.
○ Fight-or-flight: the more likely type of behavior for men when experiencing
stress.
■ Become aggressive, socially withdraw, or drink alcohol.
➢ Tend-and-befriend: the more likely type of behavior for women when experiencing
stress.
○ Seek social alliances with others.

❖ Contexts of midlife development.

➢ Historical contexts (cohort effects):
○ Changing historical times and different social expectations influence how
different cohorts move through the life span.
➢ Gender contexts:
○ Critics argue that the stage theories have a male bias and do not adequately
address women’s concerns.
■ A central focus on career choices and work achievement.
■ Little attention to childbearing and child rearing.
➢ The demands of balancing career and family are usually not experienced as intensely by
men.
➢ Research suggests that the view of midlife as a negative age period for women is
stereotypical.
➢ Midlife is a diversified, heterogeneous period for women, just as it is for men.
➢ Cultural contexts:
○ The concept of “middle age” is unclear or absent in many cultures.
○ It is common in nonindustrialized societies to describe individuals as young or old
but not as middle-aged.
○ Example: the focus among the Gusii of Kenya is primarily on life events, rather
than on age.

★ Stability and Change.

❖ Longitudinal studies.
➢ Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study:
○ “Big Five” factors of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (emotional stability).
○ Recent research indicates developmental changes in the five personality factors in
adulthood.
○ They are also related to health, intelligence and cognitive functioning,
achievement and work, and relationships.
○ Another important personality characteristic is optimism—having a positive
outlook on the future and minimizing problems.

➢ Berkeley Longitudinal Studies:

○ Intellectual orientation, self-confidence, and openness to new experience were the
more stable traits.
○ Characteristics that changed the most:
■ The extent to which individuals were nurturant or hostile.
■ Whether or not they had good self-control.
➢ Helson’s Mills College Study:
○ Rather than being in a midlife crisis, the women studied were experiencing
midlife consciousness.
 ○ Commitment to tasks of early adulthood—whether to a career or family or both—
helped women to:
■ control their impulses;
■ develop interpersonal skills;
■ become independent; and
■ work hard to achieve goals
➢ George Vaillant’s studies:
○ Does personality at middle age predict what a person’s life will be like in late
adulthood?
○ Individuals are more likely to be alive and happy at 75 to 80 years age when, at 50
years of age, they:
■ are not heavy smokers;
■ do not abuse alcohol;
■ have a stable marriage; and
■ have good coping skills

❖ Conclusions.
➢ Conclusions:
➢ Personality traits continue to change during the adult years, into late adulthood.
➢ The cumulative personality model of personality development states that with time
and age, people become more adept at interacting with their environment in ways that
promote increased stability of personality.
➢ In general, the changes that occur do so in a positive direction and are equated with
becoming more socially mature.

★ Close Relationships.
❖ Love, marriage, and divorce at midlife.
➢ Security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest are more important in middle adulthood.
➢ Most married middle-aged individuals are satisfied with their marriages.
➢ Nevertheless, while the divorce rate has decreased for young adults, it has increased for
middle-aged adults.

❖ The empty nest and its refilling.

➢ Empty-nest syndrome: the decrease in marital satisfaction after children leave the home.
○ Parents derive considerable satisfaction from their children.
➢ Today, the refilling of the empty nest is common.
○ The greatest complaint is a loss of privacy.

❖ Sibling relationships and friendships.

➢ Sibling relationships may be extremely close, apathetic, or
highly rivalrous.
 ○ The majority in adulthood are close.
➢ Friendships that have endured over the adult years tend
to be deeper.

❖ Grandparenting.
➢ The increase in longevity is influencing the nature of grandparenting.
➢ Grandparents play important roles in the lives of many grandchildren—especially when
family crises occur.
➢ Many adults become grandparents for the first time in middle age.
➢ Grandmothers typically have more contact with grandchildren than grandfathers do.
➢ Grandparent roles and styles:
○ Three prominent meanings are attached to being a grandparent:
■ Source of biological reward and continuity.
■ Source of emotional self-fulfillment.
■ Remote role.
➢ The changing profile of grandparents:
○ The most common reasons grandparents step in as parents include divorce,
adolescent pregnancy, and drug use.
○ Full-time grandparenting has been linked to health problems, depression, and
stress.

❖ Intergenerational relationships.
➢ Adults in midlife play important roles in the lives of the young and the old.
➢ They are sometimes described as the “sandwich,” “squeezed,” or “overload” generation
because of the responsibilities they have for their own children and their aging parents.
○ An alternative view is that of a “pivot” generation.
➢ Gender differences characterize intergenerational relationships.
○ Women’s relationships across generations are typically closer than other family
bonds.
➢ Intergenerational stress can increase when adults immigrate.

CHAPTER 17 - Physical Development in Late Adulthood

★ Longevity.
❖ Life expectancy and life span.
➢ Life span: the maximum number of years an individual can live.
➢ Approximately 120 to 125 years.
➢ Life expectancy: the number of years the average person born in a particular year will
probably live.
 ○ Improved with advances in medicine, nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle, along with
a substantial reduction in infant deaths.
➢ The average life expectancy for those born in 2019 in the United States is 78.8 years, but
decreased to 77.8 years in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (Arias, Tejada-
Vera, & Ahmad, 2021).
➢ Life expectancy:
○ Compared with other countries around the world, life expectancy in the United
States is higher than some, lower than others.
■ The lowest estimated in 2019 were in Africa countries of Central African
Republic (54 years), Chad (55), and Nigeria (55).
■ The highest is currently Monaco (89.4 years for those born in 2018).
■ Factors such as health conditions and medical care throughout the life
span are important.
■ In the United States, child and maternal mortality rates, the homicide rate,
and body-mass indexes contribute to a slower increase in life expectancy
than what is projected in many other countries.
➢ Within the United States, life expectancy also differs for various ethnic groups and for
men and women.
➢ The “Latino Health Paradox” is the fact that Latinos live longer than non–Latino Whites
despite lower educational attainment and income levels.
○ Proposed reasons include extended family connections and lower rates of
smoking.
➢ In 2019, the overall life expectancy of U.S. women was 81.4 years of age, while for men
it was 76.3 years of age.
○ Health attitudes, habits, lifestyles, and occupation are probably important to this
difference.
➢ Centenarians:
○ Individuals 100 years and older.
○ Increasing each year in developed countries.
○ Supercentenarian refers to those who live to be 110.
➢ The United States has the most centenarians, followed by Japan, China, and
England/Wales.
➢ For a majority of centenarians, chronic high-mortality diseases are markedly delayed for
many years.
➢ Among the factors associated with living to be 100 are longevity genes and effective
coping.
➢ In Okinawa, in the East China Sea, individuals live longer than anywhere else in the
world.
➢ Possible explanations include:
○ Diet: heavy in grains, fish, and vegetables with mild caloric restriction.
○ Low-stress lifestyle: easygoing and laid back.
 ○ Caring community: older adults do not hesitate to ask a neighbor when they
need help.
○ Activity: many older adults are physically vigorous and continue to work.
○ Spirituality: prayer is commonplace.

❖ The young old and the oldest old.

➢ Young old: those aged 65 to 84.
➢ Oldest old: those aged 85 or more.
○ In terms of functional age, may be more biologically and psychologically fit than
a 65-year old.
○ Mostly female, widowed, and live alone.
○ A significant number have cognitive impairments, but many do not.
○ Almost one-fourth are institutionalized; but a substantial subgroup are robust and
active.

❖ Biological theories of aging.

➢ Biological aging begins at birth.
➢ Evolutionary theory of aging: natural selection has not eliminated many harmful
conditions and nonadaptive characteristics in older adults.
○ Benefits conferred by evolution decline with age because natural selection is
linked to reproductive fitness.
➢ Criticisms of evolutionary theory:
○ Evolution occurs on a time scale that does not lend itself to empirical study.
○ It fails to account for cultural influences.
➢ Genetic/cellular process theories:
➢ Cellular clock theory: Leonard Hayflick’s theory that the maximum number of times
that human cells can divide is
about 75 to 80.
○ As we age, our cells have less capacity to divide.
○ Telomeres, D N A sequences that cap chromosomes, become shorter each time a
cell divides.
○ Lifestyle modifications (diet and exercise) can delay telomere shortening.
○ The enzyme telomerase may be another key component of the regeneration
process.
➢ Free-radical theory: people age because normal metabolic processes within cells
produce unstable oxygen molecules that ricochet inside cells, damaging D N A and
cellular structures.
➢ Mitochondrial theory: aging is caused by mitochondrial decay.
➢ Sirtuins: a family of proteins that have been linked to longevity and related processes;
SIRT 1 has been connected to D N A repair and aging.
➢ mTOR pathway: a cellular pathway that involves the regulation of growth and
metabolism.
➢ Hormonal stress theory: aging in the body’s hormonal system can lower resistance to
stress and increase the likelihood of disease.
○ Allostasis: the process of adaptation and adjustment to stress.
○ Allostatic load: a wearing down of body systems due to constant activity in
response to stressors.
➢ Conclusions:
○ Various biological processes contribute greatly to aging.
○ Aging is a very complex process involving multiple degenerative factors,
including interacting cell- and organ-level communications.

★ The Course of Physical Development in Late Adulthood.

❖ The aging brain.
➢ The shrinking, slowing brain:
○ The brain loses 5 to 10 percent of its weight between ages 20 and 90.
■ Shrinkage of neurons.
■ Lower numbers of synapses.
■ Reduced length and complexity of axons.
■ Reduced treelike branching in dendrites.
➢ The prefrontal cortex shrinks the most with aging.
○ Linked to decreased working memory and slower motor behavior.
○ Reductions in dopamine may cause problems in motor activities.
➢ The adapting brain:
○ The brain might be able to generate new neurons.
○ Neurogenesis: the generation of new neurons.
➢ Dendritic growth may play a role.
○ Dendrites are the receiving portion of the neuron.
○ Lack of environmental stimulation and activity may contribute to the lack of
dendritic growth in older adults.
➢ Delateralization has adaptive potential.
○ Using both hemispheres may play a compensatory role in the aging brain,
improving cognitive functioning.

❖ Sleep.
➢ The National Sleep Foundation recommends older adults get seven to eight hours of sleep
a night.
○ Many older adults have difficulty sleeping, and their sleep is more easily
disrupted.
○ As individuals age, they engage in less deep sleep.
➢ Poor sleep is a risk factor for falls, obesity, lower cognitive functioning, and earlier death.
○ Excessively long sleep duration also predicts an increase in all-cause mortality in
older adults.
➢ Strategies include avoiding caffeine, avoiding over-the-counter sleep remedies, staying
physically and mentally active, and limiting naps.

❖ Physical appearance and movement.

➢ The most noticeable changes are wrinkles and age spots.
➢ Both men and women become shorter with aging, due to bone loss in their vertebrae.
➢ Weight drops after age 60 with adults experiencing muscle loss.
○ Exercising is beneficial for overall health and fall risk reduction.
➢ Older adults move more slowly than young adults.

❖ Sensory development.
➢ Vision:
○ Visual decline in late adulthood is linked to cognitive decline, fewer social
contacts, and less challenging social/leisure activities.
○ Declining visual acuity, color vision, and depth perception are also associated
with aging.
○ Cataracts: the thickening of eye’s lens causes vision to become cloudy, opaque,
and distorted.
○ Glaucoma: damage to optic nerve because of pressure created by fluid buildup in
the eye.
○ Macular degeneration: deterioration of the retina’s macula, which corresponds
to focal center of the visual field.
➢ Hearing:
○ Hearing impairments become a serious impediment.
○ Hearing aids and cochlear implants minimize problems linked to hearing loss.
➢ Smell and taste:
○ These sensory losses begin at around age 60.
➢ Touch and pain:
○ With aging, many individuals experience impaired touch, detecting touch less in
the lower extremities.
○ An estimated 60 to 70 percent of older adults report at least some persistent pain,
most frequently back pain.
○ Older adults are less sensitive to pain than are younger adults, and this decreased
sensitivity can mask injuries and illness.
➢ Perceptual-motor coupling:
➢ Declining perceptual-motor skills can make driving a car difficult and contributes to
decreasing mobility.
➢ Older adults can compensate by driving shorter distances, choosing less congested routes,
and driving only in daylight.
➢ Two types of interventions have been found to improve older adults’ driving:
○ Cognitive training.
○ Education.

❖ The circulatory and respiratory system.

➢ Cardiovascular disorders increase in late adulthood.
➢ High blood pressure, more common in men than in women, has been linked to:
○ Illness.
○ Obesity.
○ Anxiety.
○ Stiffening of the blood vessels.
○ Lack of exercise.
➢ Lung capacity drops by 40 percent between ages 20 and 80.

❖ Sexuality.
➢ Sexuality can be lifelong, but aging does induce some changes in human sexual
performance.
➢ With age, orgasm becomes less frequent in males.
➢ Many are sexually active as long as they are healthy.
➢ Therapies have been effective in improving sexual functioning.
➢ It can be a challenge for older adults to find a partner.
○ By age 70, about 70 percent of women don’t have a partner, compared to 35
percent of men.

★ Health.
❖ Health problems.
➢ The probability of having some disease or illness increases with age.
➢ Chronic diseases and conditions with slow onset and long duration are common in late
adulthood.
○ Heart conditions.
○ Diabetes.
○ Asthma.
○ Arthritis.
➢ Low incomes are strongly related to health problems.
➢ Causes of death in older adults (Heron, 2021):
○ In 2019, heart disease (25.1 percent) continued to be the main cause of death in
U.S. adults 65 years of age and older, followed by cancer (20.6 percent).
○ In U.S. adults age 85 and older, heart disease was an even greater cause of death
(28.7 percent) than cancer (11.9 percent).
➢ Ethnicity is linked with the death rates of older adults.
○ Heart disease was the main cause of death in non–Latino Whites, Black
Americans, and Native Americans, followed by cancer.
○ Cancer was the main cause of death in Latinos and Asian Americans, followed by
heart disease.
➢ Arthritis, inflammation of the joints accompanied by pain, stiffness, and movement
problems, is especially common in older adults.
➢ Osteoporosis is an extensive loss of bone tissue that causes many older adults to walk
with a stoop.
➢ Women are more vulnerable.
➢ Accidents are the eighth leading cause of death in older adults.
➢ Falls are the leading cause of injury death for adults aged 65 and older.

❖ Substance use and abuse.

➢ Multiple medications increase the risks associated with consuming alcohol or other drugs.
➢ The frequency of binge drinking is highest among older adults.
➢ Substance abuse among older adults is often seen as the “invisible epidemic” in the
United States, because it so often goes undetected.
➢ Late-onset alcoholism is used to describe the onset of alcoholism after the age of 65.
○ Related to loneliness, loss of a spouse, or a disabling condition.
➢ Moderate drinking of red wine may be linked to better health and increased longevity,
due to the benefits of resveratrol.

❖ Exercise, nutrition, and weight.

➢ Exercise:
○ Exercise is an excellent way to maintain health and live longer.
○ Setting exercise goals and then carrying out an exercise plan are important not
only in young adults but in older adults as well.
○ Gerontologists increasingly recommend strength training in addition to aerobic
activity and stretching.
○ Exercise can contribute to people living independent lives with dignity in late
adulthood.
■ Being physically fit means being able to do the things you want to do,
whether you are young or old.
➢ Research has revealed that exercise:
○ Is linked to increased longevity.
○ Is related to prevention of common chronic diseases.
○ Is associated with increased effectiveness of treatment for many diseases.
○ Improves older adults’ cellular functioning.
○ Improves immune system functioning in older adults.
 ○ Can optimize body composition and reduce the decline in motor skills as aging
occurs.
○ Reduces the likelihood that older adults will develop mental health problems, and
can be effective in their treatment.
○ Is linked to improved brain, cognitive, and affective functioning.
➢ Nutrition and weight:
○ Four aspects of nutrition are especially important in older adults:
■ Getting adequate nutrition.
■ Avoiding overweight and obesity.
■ Deciding whether to restrict calorie intake.
■ Determining whether to take vitamin supplements.
➢ Reduced snacking between meals can contribute to harmful weight loss, especially in
women.
○ Taste enhancers and calorie supplements can help.
➢ Over 42 percent of older adults in the United States are obese.
➢ It appears that being overweight may be associated with lower all-cause mortality but
being obese is associated with higher all-cause mortality.
○ For some older adults, the extra pounds may be protective.
○ Being overweight remains a risk factor for chronic disease; and obesity is linked
to the acceleration of diseases in many older adults.
➢ Calorie restriction in laboratory animals can increase the animals’ longevity.
➢ The research findings for humans, however, are mixed.
○ Until recently, most experts on aging and health argued that a balanced diet was
all that was needed for successful aging.
➢ There have been some proposals, however, that certain vitamin supplements might help
slow the aging process and improve the health of older adults—especially, antioxidants.
➢ Antioxidants include vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene.
○ Theorized to slow the aging process by neutralizing free-radical activity.
➢ There remain many uncertainties about the role of antioxidant vitamins in health.

❖ Health treatment.
➢ As older adults live longer, disease management programs will need to be expanded.
➢ Currently, older adults with health problems in the United States receive the
recommended medical care only half the time.
➢ Although alternative home and community-based care has decreased the percentage of
older adults living in nursing homes, the probability of doing so increases with age.
➢ Factors related to health and survival in a nursing home are the patient’s feelings of
control and self-determination.
 CHAPTER 19 - Socioemotional Development in Late Adulthood
★ Theories of Socioemotional Development.
❖ Erikson’s theory.
➢ Integrity versus despair involves reflecting on the past and either piecing together a
positive review or concluding that one’s life has not been well spent.
○ Life review: a looking back at one’s life experiences, evaluating them, and
interpreting/reinterpreting them.
○ Reminiscence therapy: a therapy in which someone discusses past activities and
experiences with another individual or group.

❖ Activity theory.
➢ Activity theory: the theory that the more active and involved older adults are, the more
likely they are to be satisfied with their lives.
○ Suggests that many individuals will achieve greater life satisfaction if they
continue their middle-adulthood roles into late adulthood.
○ If these are stripped from them, it is important to find substitute roles that keep
them active and involved.

❖ Socioemotional selectivity theory.

➢ Socioemotional selectivity theory: motivation changes as a function of time horizons.
○ When horizons are limited, there is a shift toward prioritizing emotional meaning
and satisfaction.
➢ Older adults become more selective about their social networks.
○ Spend more time with individuals with whom they have had rewarding
relationships.
➢ Two important classes of goals individuals are motivated to achieve are knowledge-
related and emotional.
○ The trajectory for each type of goal is different, as it involves the perception of
time.

❖ Selective optimization with compensation theory.

➢ Selective optimization with compensation theory: successful aging is related to three
main factors: selection, optimization, and compensation.
○ Selection: older adults have reduced capacity and loss of functioning, requiring a
reduction in performance in most of life domains.
○ Optimization: suggests that older adults can maintain performance in some areas
through continued practice and use of new technologies.
○ Compensation: becomes relevant when life tasks require a level of capacity
beyond the current level of the older adult’s performance potential.

★ Personality, the Self, and Society.

❖ Personality.
➢ Conscientiousness predicts a lower mortality risk from childhood through late adulthood.
➢ High neuroticism is linked to negative emotions and appears to predict higher frailty.
➢ Higher conscientiousness is linked to a longer life and reduced risk of developing
Alzheimer disease.
➢ A higher level of agreeableness and lower level of neuroticism is linked with lowered
likelihood of developing dementia.
➢ Higher levels of conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, and
extraversion are linked to positive emotions.

❖ The self and society.

➢ Self-esteem:
○ Based on a large cross-sectional study, self-esteem tends to decline significantly
in the seventies and eighties.
■ Being widowed, institutionalized, or physically impaired.
■ Having a low religious commitment.
■ Declining health.
➢ Self-control:
○ Most older adults still effectively maintain a sense of self-control.
○ Self-control plays an important role in older adults’ engagement in healthy
activities.
■ A study of 65- to 92-year-olds found self-control was linked to better
outcomes for well-being and depression following a six-week yoga
program.
 ■ Another revealed self-control was a key factor in older adults’ physical
activity levels.
❖ Older adults in society.
➢ Stereotyping older adults:
○ Ageism: a prejudice against others because of their age.
○ Most frequent form is disrespect, followed by assumptions about ailments or
frailty.
➢ Policy issues in an aging society:
○ Health care: The increasing proportion of older adults in the population
contributes to escalating health-care costs.
■ While many older adults have chronic rather than acute problems, the
system is still based on a “cure” model.
■ Because care is often more home-based, a new type of cooperative care
needs to be developed.
➢ Generational inequity: Some are concerned that older adults receive an inequitably
large allocation of the society’s resources.
○ This inequity may contribute to intergenerational conflict and raises questions
about whether the young should have to pay for the old.
○ The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that healthy younger adults get health
insurance or pay a penalty added to this concern.
➢ Income: Poverty is linked to an increase in physical and mental health problems.
○ Women and ethnic minorities have much higher rates of poverty.
➢ Technology: The Internet plays an increasingly important role in providing access to
information and communication.
○ Still, older adults are less likely to have a computer.
○ Increasing numbers do use e-mail, smartphones, and social media.
○ Television use continues to be high, raising concerns about the amount of
sedentary behavior.

★ Families and Social Relationships.

❖ Lifestyle diversity.
➢ Married older adults:
○ In 2020, nearly 58 percent of U.S. adults over 65 years were married—with a
significant gender difference, however, more men than women were still married.
○ Marital satisfaction is greater in older adults.
○ Retirement alters a couple’s lifestyle.
○ Older adults who are married or partnered are usually happier and live longer than
those who are single.
○ Married L G B TQ individuals 50 years and over report better quality of life and
more economic and social resources than unmarried partnered counterparts.
➢ Divorced and separated older adults:
 ○ An increasing number of older adults are divorced—in many cases divorced or
separated before entering late adulthood.
○ The majority of divorced older adults are women.
○ Men are more likely than women to remarry.
○ Divorce has social, financial, and physical consequences.
○ Remarriage is increasing due to:
■ rising divorce rates;
■ increased longevity; and
■ better health
➢ Cohabiting older adults:
○ The number of cohabiting adults 50 years and older has been rising rapidly in
recent years and is expected to increase further.
○ In many cases, older adult couples cohabit more for companionship than for love.
○ Others may cohabit rather than marry in order to maintain assets separately.

❖ Attachment.
➢ Older adults have fewer attachment relationships than younger adults.
➢ With increasing age, attachment anxiety decreases.
➢ In late adulthood, attachment security is associated with greater psychological and
physical well-being than attachment anxiety.
➢ Insecure attachment is linked to more perceived negative caregiver burden in caring for
patients with Alzheimer disease.

❖ Older adult parents and their adult children.

➢ Eighty percent of older adults have living children, many of whom are middle-aged.
➢ Adult daughters are more likely to be involved in the lives of aging parents.
➢ Adult children often coordinate and monitor services for aging, disabled parents.

❖ Great-grandparenting.
➢ Four-generation families have become common.
➢ One contribution of great-grandparents is to transmit family history—where the family
came from, what their members achieved, what they endured, and how their lives
changed.
➢ Young adults interact with their grandparents more than great-grandparents.

❖ Friendship.
➢ In late adulthood, new friendships less likely to be forged but close friendships are
maintained.
○ Some older adults do seek out new friendships, especially following the death of a
spouse.
➢ Friendships are less problematic and negative than in younger years.
➢ Research suggests close ties with friends can contribute to increased longevity and to
better marital quality for both wives and husbands.
➢ As people grow older, they chose close friends over new friends and are content as long
as they have several close people in their network.

❖ Social support and social integration.

➢ Social support:
○ Convoy model of social relations: when individuals go through life embedded in
a personal network of individuals to whom they give and from whom they receive
social support.
○ Social support is related to their physical health, mental health, and life
satisfaction.
➢ Social integration:
○ Social integration is the extent to which individuals are involved in social
exchanges with others.
○ Older adults with higher levels of social integration tend to be less depressed,
engage in more physical activity, and have a more positive mood.
○ Older adults tend to report being less lonely than younger adults, and less lonely
than would be expected based on their circumstances.

❖ Altruism and volunteering.

➢ Older adults are more likely to behave in altruistic ways and value contributions to the
public good.
○ They are more likely than any other age group to volunteer more than 100 hours
annually.
➢ Volunteering is associated with better health and better cognitive functioning.
○ Among the reasons are its provision of constructive activities and productive
roles, social integration, and enhanced meaningfulness.
➢ Research suggests a significant link between volunteering and increased longevity.

★ Ethnicity, Gender, and Culture.

❖ Ethnicity.
➢ Elderly ethnic minority individuals face both ageism and racism.
○ Black Americans and Latinos are overrepresented in poverty statistics.
○ They are more likely to become ill, but less likely to receive treatment.
○ Although their earnings contribute, many never reach the eligible age for Social
Security and Medicare benefits.
➢ Despite stress and discrimination, many ethnic minority individuals develop coping
mechanisms for survival.
○ Extended family networks.
○ Churches.
❖ Gender.
➢ Some developmentalists conclude that femininity decreases in women and masculinity
decreases in men when they reach late adulthood.
○ The evidence suggests older men may become more feminine (that is, nurturing
or sensitive), but women do not necessarily become more masculine (that is,
assertive or dominant).
○ It is important to consider cohort effects.
➢ A possible double jeopardy is faced by many women—the burden of both ageism and
sexism.
➢ “Triple jeopardy”: female ethnic minority older adults face three levels of discrimination
—ageism, sexism, and racism.

❖ Culture.
➢ In most cultures, three factors are important in living the “good life” as an older adult:
○ health;
○ security; and
○ kinship/support
➢ Older adults are more likely to be accorded a position of high status in a culture when:
○ Older persons have valuable knowledge.
○ Older persons control key family/community resources.
○ Older persons are permitted to engage in useful/valued functions as long as
possible.
○ There is role continuity throughout the life span.
○ Age-related role changes that give greater responsibility, authority, and advisory
capacity.
○ The extended family is common.
➢ Respect for older adults is often greater in collectivistic cultures.

★ Successful Aging.
➢ Successful aging characterizes individuals whose physical, cognitive, and
socioemotional development is maintained longer and declines later.
➢ Many abilities can be maintained and/or improved in older adults, especially when they
have the following:
○ Proper diet.
○ Active lifestyle.
○ Mental stimulation and flexibility.
○ Positive coping skills.
○ Good social relationships and support.
○ Absence of disease.
➢ Being active and socially engaged are especially important.
➢ Successful aging also involved perceived control over the environment.
 ○ Self-efficacy also includes confidence in one’s ability to produce positive
outcomes.
➢ Older adults are a growing resource in our society: citizens who have deep expertise,
emotional balance, and the motivation to make a difference.

CHAPTER 20 - Death, Dying, and Grieving

★ The Death System and Cultural Contexts.

❖ The death system and its cultural variations.
➢ Robert Kastenbaum emphasizes that the death system in any culture comprises the
following components:
○ People.
○ Places or contexts.
○ Times.
○ Objects.
○ Symbols.
➢ Cultural variations characterize death and dying.
○ Most societies have a ritual that deals with death.
○ In most societies, death is not viewed as the end of existence, because the spiritual
body is believed to live on.

❖ Changing historical circumstances.

➢ Two hundred years ago, almost one of every two children died before the age of 10, and
one parent died before children grew up.
➢ Today, death occurs most often among older adults.
➢ The large majority of deaths in the United States occur in institutions or hospitals.
➢ This has minimized our exposure to death and its painful surroundings.

★ Defining Death and Life/Death Issues.

❖ Issues in determining death.
➢ Brain death: a neurological death when all electrical activity of the brain has ceased for
a specified period of time.
○ Flat E E G reading for a specified period of time is one criterion of brain death.
○ Includes both higher cortical functions and lower brain stem functions.

❖ Decisions regarding life, death, and health care.

➢ Advanced care planning:
○ Advanced care planning is the process of patients thinking about and
communicating their preferences about end-of-life care.
○ Living will: a legal document that reflects the patient’s advance care planning.
 ○ Advance directive: a document such as a living will that indicates whether life-
sustaining procedures should or should not be used to prolong an individual’s life
when death is imminent.
○ Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (P O L S T): a more specific
document that translates treatment preferences into medical orders.
➢ Euthanasia:
○ Euthanasia is the act of painlessly ending the lives of individuals suffering from
incurable diseases or severe disabilities.
○ Passive euthanasia: when treatment is withheld.
○ Active euthanasia: when death is deliberately induced.
➢ Assisted suicide: a process that requires the patient to self-administer lethal medication
and determine when and where to do this.
○ Widely publicized by Michigan physician Jack Kevorkian.
○ Legal in several countries and in an increasing number of U.S. states.
➢ Better care for dying individuals is needed:
○ Death in America is lonely, prolonged, and painful.
○ A good death involves physical comfort, support from loved ones, acceptance,
and appropriate medical care.
○ Hospice: a program committed to making end of life as free from pain, anxiety,
and depression as possible.
○ Palliative care: the act of reducing pain and suffering, and helping individuals die
with dignity.

★ A Developmental Perspective on Death.

❖ Causes of death.
➢ Death can occur at any point in the human life span.
○ Miscarriages and stillborn births.
○ During the birth process or in the first few days after birth.
○ Sudden infant death syndrome (S I D S), the leading cause of infant death in the
United States.
○ In childhood, most commonly accidents or illness.
○ Most adolescent and young adult deaths result from suicide, homicide, or motor
vehicle accidents.
○ Middle-age and older adult deaths usually result from chronic diseases.

❖ Attitudes toward death at different points in the life span.

➢ Childhood:
○ Children as young as 4 to 5 years of age can understand the irreversibility of death
and the cessation of functions.
○ At some point in the middle and late childhood years, many children develop
more realistic and accurate perceptions of death.
 ○ Honesty is the best strategy in discussing death with children.
■ Support programs for parentally bereaved children and their caregivers
can be beneficial.
➢ Adolescence:
○ Deaths of friends, siblings, parents, or grandparents bring death to the forefront of
adolescents’ lives.
○ Adolescents develop more abstract conceptions about death than children do, and
they may develop religious and philosophical views.
➢ Adulthood:
○ Middle-aged adults fear death more than young adults do.
○ Older adults are forced to examine the meanings of life and death more frequently
than younger adults.
➢ In old age, one’s own death may take on an appropriateness it lacked in earlier years.
○ Increased thinking and conversing about death.
○ Increased sense of integrity from a positive life review.
○ Less likely to have unfinished business.
➢ Attitudes about death vary, however.

★ Facing One’s Own Death.

❖ Kübler-Ross’ stages of dying.
➢ Knowledge of death’s inevitability permits us to establish priorities and structure our
time.
➢ Most dying individuals want an opportunity to make some decisions regarding their own
life and death.
➢ Some want time to resolve problems and conflicts and to put their affairs in order.
○ Denial and isolation: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ first stage of dying, in which a
dying person denies they are really going to die.
○ Anger: a dying person’s denial gives way to anger, resentment, rage, envy.
○ Bargaining: a dying person develops hope that death can be postponed.
○ Depression: when the dying person comes to accept the certainty of their death, a
period of depression or preparatory grief may appear.
○ Acceptance: the dying person develops a sense of peace, an acceptance of their
fate, and in many cases, a desire to be left alone.
➢ Some problems with Kübler-Ross’ approach:
○ The existence of the five-stage sequence has not been demonstrated by research.
○ The five-stage interpretation fails to consider variations in patients’ situations.
➢ Some psychologists prefer to describe the stages as potential reactions to dying; emotions
may wax and wane.
➢ The extent to which people have found meaning and purpose in their lives is linked with
how they approach death.
❖ Perceived control and denial.
➢ Perceived control may be an adaptive strategy for remaining alert and cheerful.
➢ Denial insulates and allows one to avoid coping with intense feelings of anger and hurt.
○ Can be maladaptive, depending on the extent of the denial.
❖ The contexts in which people die.
➢ According to Lei and others (2021)
○ Around 33 percent of Americans die in hospitals.
○ Around 28 percent of Americans die in nursing or hospice facility.
➢ Hospitals offer many important advantages, including:
○ Professional staff members.
○ Technology that may prolong life.
➢ Hospitals may not be the best place for many; and most people say they would rather die
at home.

★ Coping with the Death of Someone Else.

❖ Communicating with a dying person.
➢ Most psychologists argue it is best for dying individuals to know they are dying.
○ Dying individuals can close their lives in accord with their own ideas about
proper dying.
○ They may be able to complete plans and projects, make arrangements for
survivors, and participate in decisions about a funeral and burial.
○ They have the opportunity to reminisce and converse with others.
○ They will have a better understanding of what is happening to them and what
medical staff are doing.

❖ Grieving.
➢ Dimensions of grieving:
○ Grief: the emotional numbness, disbelief, separation anxiety, despair, sadness,
and loneliness accompanying the loss of someone loved.
■ Pining or yearning reflects an intermittent, recurrent wish or need to
recover the lost person.
■ Cognitive factors are involved in the severity of grief.
➢ Prolonged grief disorder: grief that involves enduring despair and remains unresolved
over an extended period of time.
○ Individuals who lose someone on whom they were emotionally dependent are
often at greatest risk.
➢ Disenfranchised grief: an individual’s grief involving a deceased person that is a
socially ambiguous loss and cannot be openly mourned or supported.
○ For example, death of an ex-spouse.
➢ Dual-process model of coping with bereavement: a model of coping with bereavement
that emphasizes oscillation between two main dimensions.
 ○ Loss-oriented stressors.
○ Restoration-oriented stressors.
➢ Coping and type of death:
○ Death’s impact on survivors is strongly influenced by the death’s circumstances.
○ Sudden deaths are likely to have more intense and prolonged effects on survivors.
➢ Cultural diversity in healthy grieving:
○ Some cultures emphasize the importance of breaking bonds with the deceased;
others, that such bonds should be maintained.
○ There is no one right, ideal way to grieve.

❖ Making sense of the world.

➢ Grieving stimulates individuals to try to make sense of their world.
➢ Reliving events leading to the death is common.
➢ When death is caused by an accident or a disaster, the effort to make sense of it is often
more vigorous.

❖ Losing a life partner.

➢ Approximately three times as many women as men are widowed.
➢ Those left behind after the death of an intimate partner often:
○ Suffer profound grief.
○ Die earlier than expected.
○ Endure financial loss, loneliness, increased physical illness, and psychological
disorders.
➢ Surviving spouses seek to cope with the loss in various ways.
○ Some intensify their religious and spiritual beliefs.
○ Widows may be more likely to use positive reframing, active distraction, help-
seeking, and turning to God for strength.
○ Widowers may be more likely to use avoidant strategies and seek connection with
their late spouse.
○ Finding meaning in the death of a spouse is linked to a lower level of anger in
bereavement.
➢ For both widows and widowers, social support helps them adjust.
○ Widow-to-Widow programs provide support for newly widowed women.
❖ Forms of mourning.
➢ One decision facing the bereaved is what to do with the body.
○ In the United States, over half elect cremation.
➢ The funeral is an important aspect of mourning in many cultures.
○ In the United States, the current trend is a private funeral followed by a memorial
ceremony.
➢ The funeral industry is a source of some controversy.
○ Funeral directors argue the funeral provides a form of closure.
 ○ Critics claim funeral directors are just trying to make money and that embalming
is grotesque.
➢ Cultures vary in how they practice mourning.
➢ Among the Amish, the community handles virtually all aspects of the funeral.
➢ In traditional Judaism, the program of mourning is divided into graduated time periods,
each with its appropriate practices.
○ The seven-day period of the shivah is especially important.