*
Becoming an Adult: Physical, Cognitive,
and Personality Development
* What role transitions mark entry into
adulthood in Western societies? How do nonWestern cultures mark the transitions to
adulthood?
* How does going to college fit in the transition
to adulthood?
* What psychological criteria mark the transition
to adulthood?
* What aspects of early young adulthood make it
a separate developmental stage?
*
*Period between late teens and
mid-to late twenties when
individuals are not adolescents
but are not yet fully adults
*
*Role Transitions - the process of
assuming new responsibilities and
duties
* E.g., (Western Culture) voting, completing
education, full-time employment,
establishing an independent household,
getting marries, parenthood
*Rites of Passage - rituals marking
initiation into adulthood
* E.g., tribal rituals
*
* 67% of all high-school graduates go to college
* Promotes intellectual and personal growth
* Returning Adult Students - college students
over 25
* Tend to be: problem solvers, self-directed,
pragmatic
* Integrate coursework with employment
*
* Establishing Intimacy
* Intimacy versus Isolation - sixth stage in Erikson’s
theory and the major psychosocial task for young
adults
* Stronger sense of identity correlated to higher
levels of intimacy in young adults
*
* In what respects are young adults at their
physical peak?
* How healthy are young adults in general?
* How do smoking, drinking alcohol, and
nutrition affect young adults’ health?
* How does the health of young adults differ as a
function of socioeconomic status, gender, and
ethnicity?
*
* Physical functioning generally peaks during
young adulthood
* Overall young adults are healthy
* Fewer deaths from disease
*
* Smoking
* More than half of the cancers are related to
smoking (American Cancer Society)
* Risks with second-hand smoke
* Drinking Alcohol
* Binge drinking: type of drinking defined for men as
consuming five or more drinks in a row and for
women as consuming four or more drinks in a row
within the past 2 weeks
* Addiction: physical dependence on a substance
such that withdrawal symptoms are
experienced when deprived of that substance
*
*Nutrition
* Metabolism: how much energy the body needs
* Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs): chemicals that
cause fatty deposits to accumulate in arteries,
impeding blood flow
* High-density lipoproteins (HDLs): chemicals that
help keep arteries clear and break down LDLS
* Body mass index (BMI): a ratio of body weight
and height and is related to total body fat
*Social Factors
* Socioeconomic status - ability to acquire
adequate health care
* Education - association with higher income;
higher awareness of dietary and lifestyle
influences on health
*Gender
* Women live longer than men on average; young
men are more likely to die from homicide
*Ethnic Group Differences
* Relationship between ethnicity and SES
*
* What is intelligence in adulthood?
* What types of abilities have been identified?
How do they change?
* What is postformal thought?
How does it differ
from formal operations?
* How do stereotypes influence thinking?
*
*How should we view intelligence in adults?
* Multidemensional - characteristic of theories of
intelligence that identify several types of
intellectual abilities
* Multidirectionality - developmental pattern in
which some aspects of intelligence improve and
other aspects decline during adulthood
* Interindividual Variability - patterns of change
that vary from one person to another
* Plasticity - concept that intellectual abilities are
not fixed by can be modified under the right
conditions at just about under point in adulthood
*
*Primary Abilities - groups of related
intellectual skills (e.g., memory, spatial
ability)
*
* Secondary Abilities - broader intellectual skills that
subsume and organize the primary abilities
* Fluid Intelligence - abilities that make you a flexible
and adaptive thinker, allow you to make inferences
and to understand the relations among concepts
* Crystallized Intelligence - the knowledge you acquired
through life experience and education in a particular
culture
* Postformal Thought - thinking characterized by
recognizing that the correct answer varies from
one situation to another, that solutions should
be realistic, that ambiguity and contradiction
are typical, and that subjective factors play
role in thinking
* Reflective Judgment - way in which adults
reason through real-life dilemmas
*
* Optimal Level of Development - the higher
level of information-processing of which a
person is capable
* Skill Acquisition - the gradual and haphazard
process by which people learn new abilities
* Integrating Emotion and Logic in Life Problems
*
* Stereotype - a social belief representing
organized prior knowledge about a group of
people that affects how we interpret new
information
* Implicit Stereotype - activation of strong
stereotypes that is nonconscious, increasing
the likelihood of their influencing behavior
* Stereotype Threat - an evoked fear of being
judges in accordance with a negative
stereotype about a group to which you belong
*
* What is the life-span construct?
How do adults
create scenarios and life stories?
* What are possible selves?
Do they show
differences during adulthood?
* What are personal control beliefs?
*
* Life-Span Construct - a unified sense of the
past, present, and future based on personal
experience and input from other people
* Scenario - manifestation of the life-span
construct through expectations about the
future
* Social Clock - tagging future events with a
particular time or age by which they are to be
completed
*
*McAdam’s Life Story Model
* A personal narrative that organizes past events
into a coherent sequence
* Representations of what we could become, what we
would like to become, and what we are afraid of
becoming
*
* The degree to which you believe your performance
in a situation depends on something you do
*