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Adolescent Egocentrism
Moral Development
Adolescent Social and Emotional Development
Is Adolescence Stormy
Cross-cultural perspectives on Adolescence
Self-concept
Personal Identity
Domains of Identity
Group Differences in Identity
Peer relations
Adolescent friendships
Dating and Sexual Activity
Peer versus Parental Influences
Parenting and Adolescent Development
Adolescents at school
Adolescents at work
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Social Cognitive
Changes of
Adolescence
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Adolescent
Teenagers’ assumption they
egocentrism are the focus of everyone’s
attention and that their
experiences, thoughts, &
feelings are unique.
Imaginary
Teenagers’ unjustified concern
audience
they are the focus of others’
attention.
Personal
Teenagers’ exaggerated belief
fable
in their own uniqueness.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Moral Reasoning
Moral reasoning:
Thinking & making judgments about the morally
right course of action in a given situation.
1.
2.
3.
Piaget’s Model
Amoral stage, until about age 7.
Moral realism, treating morality as absolute
and moral constraints as unalterable.
Autonomous morality, seeing morality as
relative to the situation, usually attained in
late childhood or early adolescence.
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Moral Reasoning
Kohlberg’s Model
Preconventional morality
1.
Obedience & punishment orientation
2.
Hedonistic & instrumental orientation
Conventional morality
3.
Good-boy, nice-girl orientation
4.
Authority or law-and-order orientation
Postconventional (principled) morality
5.
Social contract orientation
6.
Hierarchy of principles orientation
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Stage theories of moral reasoning have
been criticized because of:
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weak connection between
moral thought & moral action
methods used to assess
moral reasoning
possible gender biases
possible cultural biases
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
weak connection between moral
thought & moral action
Hartshorne & May (1928)
Prentice, Moral development and
delinquency
Follow up on individuals who dropped out
of the Milgram experiment
Froming, Moral Development and
conformity
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
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Methods used to assess moral reasoning
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Kurtines & Grief (1974) reliability
James Rest—
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Changes in the scoring manual
Objective Test of Moral Reasoning
Gender Differences -Carol Giligan (1982) claimed women focus more
on caring and men more on justice.
Wark & Krebs (1996) found the opposite from
Giligan—that women were more advanced
Cuture—traditional cultures score lower
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
In reworking issues faced in earlier
developmental periods, adolescents face
four important tasks:
1.
2.
3.
4.
establishing personal
identity
achieving new level of
closeness & trust with peers
acquiring new status in the
family
moving toward more
autonomous stance toward
the larger world
Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Social World
of Adolescence:
An Overview
How Stormy Is Adolescence?
(Strum Und Drang – G. Stanley Hall)
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Not all adolescents experience storm and
stress.
But adolescence is on the whole more
challenging than other developmental periods.
Early adolescence seems to be subphase
when:
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youngsters experience more turmoil
parents experience more stress & dissatisfaction
families experience more conflict
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
on Adolescence
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In nonindustrialized cultures, transition to adult
roles begins much earlier.
In some traditional cultures, the transition is
more abrupt.
Puberty rites/rites of passage:
Ceremonies that mark the transition from childhood to
adulthood.
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People in our society expect young people to
start acting like adults quite abruptly, but the
timing of this transition is ambiguous.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Self-Concept During Adolescence
Changes From Middle School to Adolescence:
1.
Self-concepts become more differentiated.
2.
Self-concepts become more individuated.
3.
Self-concepts begin to focus on how they
interact with others.
4.
Teens increasingly view themselves as selfreflective.
5.
They increasingly think of the self as a
coherent system made up of diverse but
integrated parts.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Self-Concept During Adolescence
Changes From Early to Late Adolescence:
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Not until later adolescence do they start to
grasp the notion of conscious and
unconscious levels of experience.
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Younger adolescents (12-13) recognize
contradictions in the self and may have a
sense of phoniness.
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Only in later adolescence are youngsters able
to unify contradictory aspects of the self.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Declining Fragility of the Self
The feeling the self is fragile is linked to several
other beliefs and behaviors:
1.
It is tied to concern that the self is
transparent and readily scrutinized by others.
2.
It partly explains expressions of physical
invulnerability that are part of the personal
fable.
3.
It helps account for conformity in dress and
hair style.
4.
It underlies their tendency to fantasize
different roles.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Declining Fragility of the Self
In time the sense of self
becomes more firmly
established, through:
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interactions with
others
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performance at
school
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experiences in the
larger world
Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Concept of Personal Identity
Forming a personal identity involves
integrating these into a whole:
 past experiences
 ongoing changes
 society’s expectations for the future
Identity crisis:
Erikson’s term for the struggle
teenagers experience when trying to
establish their personal identities.
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Individual Differences
in Identity Formation
James Marcia (1980) identified 4 categories of
identity status:
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diffusion: no exploration or commitment
foreclosure: commitment without exploration
moratorium: exploration without commitment
achievement: exploration followed by
commitment
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Domains of Identity
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Sex role
Career
Educational
Religious
Ethnic/racial
Cultural
Political
National
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Group Differences in Identity Formation
There are some group differences in how
identity formation unfolds:
 Gay & lesbian adolescents have to contend
with more social disapproval.
 Girls show more concern than boys about
how to balance career & family demands.
 Minority youth face two often conflicting
sets of cultural values
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those of their ethnic community
those of the larger society
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Peer relationships change and impact
other areas of development:
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Cognitive advances of adolescence make
possible a deeper, more mature understanding
of others.
Involvement with peers becomes increasingly
critical to process in self-understanding.
Peer group membership contributes to
development of personal identity.
Same-sex friendships pave the way for
romantic relationships.
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The Nature of Adolescent Friendships
Friendship changes from middle childhood to
adolescence, with increasing emphasis on:
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mutual understanding
self-disclosure
intimacy
commitment
It continues to change as older teens become
able to coordinate a broader range of friends.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Changes in the Nature of Peer Groups
The nature of peer groups changes as
cliques and crowds form.
The importance of these groups increases
in early adolescence and later declines.
Photo copyright © 2003 Travis Langley, Henderson State University
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Changes in the Nature of Peer Groups
The nature of peer groups changes as
cliques and crowds form.
Clique:
A close-knit group of a few friends who are
intimately involved with each other.
Crowd:
A group that is larger, less exclusive, and
more loosely organized than a clique.
The importance of these groups increases
in early adolescence and later declines.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Dating & Sexual Activity
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Few adolescents begin dating before they
participate in crowds.
Fewer than 10% date before age 12.
90% are dating by age 16.
By 12th grade, emotional intimacy in male-female
relationships surpasses that of same-sex
relationships.
Teen sexual activity has increased in the U.S. in
recent decades, but the size of the increase is not
clear.
There are gender and ethnic differences in rates
of sexual activity.
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The relative influence of peers and parents
changes over the course of adolescence:
 Peer influence increases in early
adolescence, then declines.
 Peers and parents tend to influence
different areas of adolescents’ lives.
 Teens adopt dress and behavior that
set them apart from other age groups.
 Parental influence remains strong into
adulthood.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Parents can directly support
development by:
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allowing adolescents to explore new roles
and values
tolerating selfexpression
discussing
different
views
still providing
guidelines
when needed
Photo copyright © 2003 Travis Langley, Henderson State University
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Changing Family Structure
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Adolescents’ increasing cognitive skills &
physical maturity lead them to push for
greater autonomy.
Parents’ perceptions often lag behind
their children’s development.
Conflict often accompanies realignments
in parent-child relationships.
Parent-child relationships become
increasingly symmetrical.
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Parenting Patterns &
Adolescent Development
Adolescents who received warm,
authoritative parenting fosters tend to:
 be more mature
 have stronger achievement orientation
 do better in school
 show higher self-esteem
 show less aggressive behavior and
delinquency
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Parenting outcomes
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Authoritarian parenting more likely to
lead to positive outcomes for AsianAmerican adolescents
Harsh and inconsistent parenting
associated with aggression and
delinquency
Monitoring is associated with less
delinquency
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The Impact of Divorce
Adolescents from single-parent families
and stepfamilies are at heightened risk
for:
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behavior problems
drug & alcohol use
early sexual activity
adolescent pregnancy
poor school performance
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Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Impact of Divorce
Consequences of divorce appear more
slowly in girls than boys.
 Girls experience more
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academic difficulties
distress
dissatisfaction with the family’s situation
long-term economic problems
Boys are more likely to show problem
behavior.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Adolescents
in the
Broader World
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Adolescents at School
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Peer culture at school rewards popularity and
athletic performance far more than scholastic
achievement.
Grades decline during adolescence.
Adolescents differ in beliefs about what factors
contribute to academic achievement.
Internal locus of control:
The belief that success depends on one’s own efforts.
External locus of control:
The belief that success depends
on factors outside one’s control.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Adolescents at School
Girls are often socialized away from instrumental
competence (ability to accomplish things):
 Parents tend to believe boys have more natural
talent for math, and convey this to children.
 Girls usually have lower expectations for math
and a variety of other tasks, despite their
overall better grades.
 When girls fail, they are more likely to attribute
failure to something they cannot change, like
innate lack of ability.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Adolescents at Work
Work can increase self-esteem, but it also poses
risks:
 The work available is often routine &
impersonal.
 High school students with jobs report
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fewer close relationships with peers
less involvement with school activities
less enjoyment of school
lower grades
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The coherence of adolescent
development takes three forms:
1.
2.
3.
The various aspects of individual
development fit together in a coherent
way.
There is coherence in individual
development over time.
Individuals’ level of adjustment can
change in response to changes in
environment.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.