Chapter 18– Emerging Adulthood:
Cognitive Development
Postformal Thought
• A proposed stage of cognitive development,
after Piaget’s 4 stages
• Extends adolescent thinking by being more
practical, flexible, and dialectical
• Characterized by “problem finding”
• Person is more open with ideas and less
concerned with absolute right and wrong
Time Management
• A struggle for emerging adults but usually
mastered as cognition matures
• Delay discounting
– Tendency to undervalue, or ignore, future
consequences and rewards in favor of
immediate gratification
• i.e. going to the beach instead of studying for a
final
Really a Stage?
• Piaget’s theory of child cognition and postformal thought stage is controversial
• Prefrontal cortex is not mature until one’s
early 20’s
• Most cultures describe adult thought as
qualitatively different from adolescent
thought
Really a Stage?
Informed by Experience
• Labouvie-Vief investigated age differences in
self-descriptions.
• These were categorized as:
– protective (high in self-involvement, low in self-doubt)
– dysregulated (fragmented, overwhelmed by emotions
or problems)
– complex (valuing openness and independence above
all)
– integrated (able to regulate emotions and logic)
Really a Stage?
Combining Subjective and
Objective Thought
• Subjective thought
– Thinking that is based on personal qualities of
the individual thinker (i.e. experiences,
culture, goals)
• Objective thought
– Thinking that is not based on thinker’s
personal qualities but instead based valid
facts and numbers
Cognitive Flexibility
• Helps people deal with unforeseen events
• Helps avoid retreating into emotions or
intellect
• A hallmark of postformal cognition
• A characteristic more common in
emerging adults than younger people
• Listening to others and considering
diverse opinions
Countering Stereotypes
Stereotype Threat
• The possibility that one’s appearance or behavior will
be misread to confirm another’s oversimplified,
prejudiced attitudes.
• The mere possibility of being negatively stereotyped
arouses anxiety that can disrupt cognition and distort
emotional regulation.
• Makes people of all ages doubt their ability, which
reduces learning if their anxiety interferes with
cognition.
Dialectical Thought
• The most advanced cognitive process
• Ability to consider a thesis and its antithesis and
arrive at a synthesis
• Being able to see the pros and cons,
advantages and disadvantages, possibilities and
limitations
• Dialectical thinking is rare in adolescents, more
often found in middle-aged people
Dialectical Thought
• Thesis
– A statement of belief
• Antithesis
– A statement of belief that opposes the thesis
• Synthesis
– A new idea that integrates the thesis and its
antithesis, thus representing a new and more
comprehensive level of truth
Morals and Religion
• Adult responsibilities, experiences, and
education affect moral reasoning and
religious beliefs.
• Maturation of values appears first in
emerging adulthood
• Moral decisions are least likely in early
adolescence
Which Era? What Place?
• Culture determines whether or not a
particular issue is a moral one.
• The power of culture makes it difficult to
assess whether adult morality changes
with age because changing opinions can
be judged as improvements or declines.
• The process of moral thinking improves
with age.
Which Era? What Place?
Dilemmas for Emerging Adults
Gender differences
• Morality of care
– The tendency of females to be reluctant to
judge right and wrong in absolute terms due
to socialization
• Morality of justice
– The tendency of males to emphasize justice
over compassion and judging right and wrong
in absolute terms
Dilemmas for Emerging Adults
Measuring Moral Growth
Defining Issues Test (DIT)
• A way to measure moral thinking by having the
test takers rank possible solutions to moral
dilemmas
• Developed by James Rest
Stages of Faith
1: Intuitive-projective, ages 3-7
2: Mythic-literal, ages 7-11, some adults
3: Synthetic-conventional, conformist
4: Individual-reflective, active commitment
5: Conjunctive: postformal way of thinking,
rarely achieved before middle-age
6: Universalizing: transforming experience
may cause this, rarely achieved
Cognitive Growth and Higher
Education
The Effects of College
• Most contemporary students attend college primarily
to secure their vocational and financial future.
• College also correlates with better health - graduates
everywhere smoke less, eat better, exercise more,
and live longer.
• There is no doubt that tertiary education improves
verbal and quantitative abilities, knowledge of specific
subject areas, skills in various professions, reasoning,
and reflection.
Changes in the College Context
Changes in the Students
• No longer for elite few
• Rates of college grads worldwide is up
• In most developed nations, there are more
females than males in college
• Fewer students major in liberal arts, more in
business and professions (e.g. law and
medicine)
Changes in the Students
Changes in the Students
Changes in the College Context
Changes in Institutions
• The U.S. has twice as many colleges as it
did 50 years ago.
• More career programs
• Hire more part time faculty, more women
and minorities
• Income most important reason on whether
an emerging adult will go to college or not
Evaluating the Changes
Diversity and enrollment
• The increased diversity of the student
body is more likely to encourage than
discourage learning.
Graduates and dropouts
• A correlation between college ed. and later
income is stronger now than before due to
the loss of unskilled jobs.
Graduates and Dropouts