AP Psychology

Module 52 - Adolescence: Social Development and Emerging Adulthood

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the social tasks and challenges of adolescence?

Theorist Erik Erikson (1963) contended that each stage of life has its own psychosocial task, a crisis that needs resolution. Young children wrestle with issues of trust, then autonomy (independence), then initiative. School-age children strive for competence, feeling able and productive. But for people your age, the task is to synthesize past, present, and future possibilities into a clearer sense of self (TABLE 52.1). Adolescents wonder, "Who am I as an individual? What do I want to do with my life? v\That values should I live by? What do I believe in?" Erikson called this quest the adolescent's search for identity.

As sometimes happens in psychology, Erikson's interests were bred by his own life experience. As the son of a Jewish mother and a Danish Gentile father, Erikson was "doubly an outsider," reported Morton Hunt (1993, p. 391). He was "scorned as a Jew in school but mocked as a Gentile in the synagogue because of his blond hair and blue eyes." Such episodes fueled his interest in the adolescent struggle for identity.

Forming an Identity

To refine their sense of identity, adolescents in individualist cultures usually try out different "selves" in different situations. They may act out one self at home, another with friends, and still another at school or on Facebook. If two situations overlap-as when a teenager brings friends home-the discomfort can be considerable. The teen asks, "Which self should I be? Which is the real me?" The resolution is a self-definition that unifies the various selves into a consistent and comfortable sense of who one is – an identity.

For both adolescents and adults, group identities are often formed by how we differ from those around us. When living in Britain, I became conscious of my Americanness. When spending time with my daughter in Africa, I become conscious of my minority (White) race. When surrounded by women, I am mindful of my gender identity. For international students, for those of a minority ethnic group, for people with a disability, for those on a team, a social identity often forms around their distinctiveness.

But not always. Erikson noticed that some adolescents forge their identity early, simply by adopting their parents'values and expectations. (Traditional, less individualist cultures teach adolescents who they are, rather than encouraging them to decide on their own.) Other adolescents may adopt an identity defined in opposition to parents but in conformity with a particular peer group-jocks, preps, geeks, band kids, debaters.

Most young people do develop a sense of contentment with their lives. When American teens were asked whether a series of statements described them, 81 percent said Yes to "I would choose my life the way it is right now." The other 19 percent agreed that "I wish I were somebody else" (Lyons, 2004). Reflecting on their existence, 75 percent of American collegians say they "discuss religion/spirituality" with friends, "pray," and agree that "we are all spiritual beings" and "search for meaning/purpose in life" (Astin et al., 2004; Bryant & Astin, 2008). This would not surprise Stanford psychologist William Damon and his colleagues (2003), who have contended that a key task of adolescence is to achieve a purpose-a desire to accomplish something personally meaningful that makes a difference to the world beyond oneself.

The late teen years, when many people like you in industrialized countries begin attending college or working full time, provide new opportunities for trying out possible roles. Here is something for you to remember: Many college seniors have achieved a clearer identity and a more positive self-concept than they had as first-year students (Waterman, 1988).

This could be one of the reasons why the first year of college is such a challenge. Collegians who have achieved a clear sense of identity are less prone to self-destructive behavior such as alcohol misuse (Bishop et al., 2005).

Several nationwide studies indicate that young Americans' self-esteem falls during the early to mid teen years, and, for girls, depression scores often increase. But then selfimage rebounds during the late teens and twenties (Robins et al., 2002; Twenge & Campbell, 2001; Twenge & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2002) . Late adolescence and early adulthood are also when agreeableness and emotional stability scores increase (Klimstra et al., 2009; Lucas and Donnellan, 2011).

Erikson contended that the adolescent identity stage is followed in young adulthood by a developing capacity for intimacy, the ability to form emotionally close relationships. Romantic relationships, which tend to be emotionally intense, are reported by some two in three North American 17-year-olds, but fewer among those in collectivist countries such as China (Collins et al., 2009; Li et al., 2010). Those who enjoy high-quality (intimate, supportive) relationships with family and friends tend also to enjoy similarly high-quality romantic relationships in adolescence, which set the stage for healthy adult relationships. Such relationships are, for most of us, a source of great pleasure. When Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [chick-SENT-me-hi] and Jeremy Hunter (2003) used a beeper to sample the daily experiences of American teens, they found them unhappiest when alone and happiest when with friends. As Aristotle long ago recognized, we humans are "the social animal." Relationships matter.

Parent and Peer Relationships

FOCUS QUESTION: How do parents and peers influence adolescents?

This next research finding will not surprise you: As adolescents in Western cultures seek to form their OWl1 identities, they begin to pull away from their parents (Shanal1an et al., 2007). The preschooler who can't be close enough to her mother, who loves to touch and cling to her, becomes the 14-year-old who wouldn't be caught dead holding hands with Mom. The transition occurs gradually. By adolescence, arguments occur more often, usually over mundane things – household chores, bedtime, homework (Tesser et al., 1989). Parent-child conflict during the transition to adolescence tends to be greater with first-born than with second-born children, and greater with mothers than with fathers (Burk et al., 2009; Shanahan et al., 2007).

For a minority of parents and their adolescents, differences lead to real splits and great stress (Steinberg & Morris, 2001) . But most disagreements are at the level of harmless bickering. And most adolescents – 6000 of them in 10 countries, from Australia to Bangladesh to Turkey – said they like their parents (Offer et al., 1988). "We usually get along but ... ," adolescents often reported (Galambos, 1992; Steinberg, 1987). Positive parent-teen relations and positive peer relations often go hand in hand. High school girls who have the most affectionate relationships with their mothers tend also to .~-enjoy the most intimate friendships with girlfriends (Gold & Yanof, 1985). And teens who feel close to their parents tend to be healthy and happy and to do well in school (Resnick et al., 1997). Of course, we can state this correlation the other way: Misbehaving teens are more likely to have tense relationships with parents and other adults.

Adolescence is typically a time of diminishing parental influence and growing peer influence. Asked in a survey if they had "ever had a serious talk" with their child about illegal drugs, 85 percent of American parents answered Yes. But if the parents had indeed given this earnest advice, many teens a apparently tune it out only 45 percent could recall such a talk (Morin & Brossard, 1997).

Heredity does much of the heavy lifting in forming individual temperament and personality differences, and peer influences do much of the rest. Most teens are herd animals. They talk, dress, and act more like their peers than their parents. What their friends are, they often become, and what "everybody's doing," they often do. In teen calls to hotline counseling services, peer relationships have been the most discussed topic (Boehm et al., 1999). The average U.S. teen sends 60 text messages per day (Pew, 2012). Many adolescents become absorbed by social networking, sometimes with a compulsive use that produces "Facebook fatigue ." Online communication stimulates intimate self – disclosure – both for better (support groups) and for worse (online predators and extremist groups) (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Valkenburg & Peter, 2009).

For those who feel excluded, the pain is acute. "The social atmosphere in most high schools is poisonously clique-driven and exclusionary," observed social psychologist Elliot Aronson (2001). Most excluded "students suffer in silence .. .. A small number act out in violent ways against their classmates." Those who withdraw are vulnerable to loneliness, low self-esteem, and depression (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Peer approval matters.

Teens see their parents as having more influence in other areas – for example, in shaping their religious faith and in thinking about college and career choices (Emerging Trends, 1997). A Gallup Youth Survey pressure reveals that most share their parents' political views (Lyons, 2005).

Emerging Adulthood

FOCUS QUESTION: What is emerging adulthood?

In the Western world, adolescence now roughly corresponds to the teen years. At earlier times, and in other parts of the world today, this slice of life has been much smaller (Baumeister & Tice, 1986). Shortly after sexual maturity, young people would assume adult responsibilities and status. The event might be celebrated with an elaborate initiation – a public rite of passage. The new adult would then work, marry, and have children.

When schooling became compulsory in many Western countries, independence was put on hold until after graduation. From Europe to Australia, adolescents are now taking more time to establish themselves as adults. In the United States, for example, the average age at first marriage has increased more than 4 years since 1960 (to 28 for men, 26 for women). In 1960, 3 in 4 women and 2 in 3 men had, by age 30, finished school, left home, become financially independent, married, and had a child. Today, fewer than half of 30-year-old women and one-third of men have achieved these five milestones (Henig, 2010). Delayed independence has overlapped with an earlier onset of puberty. Earlier sexual maturity is related both to girls' increased body fat (which can support pregnancy and nursing) and to weakened parent-child bonds, including absent fathers (Ellis, 2004).

Together, later independence and earlier sexual maturity have widened the once-brief interlude between biological maturity and social independence (FIGURE 52.1) . In prosperous communities, the time from 18 to the mid-twenties is an increasingly not-yet-settled phase of life, which some now call emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2006, 2007; Reitzle, 2006). No longer adolescents, these emerging adults, having not yet assumed full adult responsibilities and independence, feel "in between." After high school, those who enter the job market or go to college may be managing their own time and priorities more than ever before. Yet they may be doing so from their parents' home – unable to afford their own place and perhaps still emotionally dependent as well. Recognizing today's more gradually emerging adulthood, the U.S. government now allows dependent children up to age 26 to remain on their parents' health insurance (Cohen, 2010).

Before You Move On

ASK YOURSELF: What have been your best and worst experiences during adolescence? How have your experiences been influenced by environmental factors, such as your cultural context, and how have they been influenced by your inborn traits?

TEST YOURSELF: How has the transition from childhood to adulthood changed in Western cultures in the last century or so?