Breakfast Club
Erickson’s
• Stage 5: Adolescence -- Age 12 to 18
• Crisis: Identity vs. Role Confusion
• Description: This is the time when we ask the question "Who am
I?" To successfully answer this question, Erikson suggests, the
adolescent must integrate the healthy resolution of all earlier
conflicts. Did we develop the basic sense of trust? Do we have a
strong sense of independence, competence, and feel in control of
our lives? Adolescents who have successfully dealt with earlier
conflicts are ready for the "Identity Crisis", which is considered by
Erikson as the single most significant conflict a person must face.
Piaget Cognitive Development
Kohlberg’s Moral Development
James Marcia’s
Identity Statuses
• Moratorium
– Exploring an identity but no major decisions have been
made
• Foreclosure
– Decisions have been made based on the ideas of others
• Diffusion
– No progress. Not exploring options and no decisions
made
• Achievement
– Considered options and have committed to an identity
Parenting Styles
• Authoritative: democratic style of parenting, parents are attentive,
forgiving, teach their offspring proper behavior, have a set of rules,
and if child fails to follow their is punishment, if followed their is
reward/reinforcement
• Authoritarian: strict parenting style, involves high expectations from
parents but have little communication between child and parents.
Parents don't provide logical reasoning for rules and limits, and are
prone to harsh punishments
• Permissive: parents take on the role of "friends" rather than parents,
do not have any expectations of child, they allow the child to make
their own decisions
• Uninvolved: parents neglect their child by putting their own life
before the child's. They do provide for the child's basic needs but
they show little interaction with the child
Elkind’s List of Problems
• Finding fault with authority figures: Adolescents realize the
adults they have admired for years fall short of the ideal
person and they let everyone know this.
• Argumentativeness: They develop viewpoints and are eager
to argue them (argument involves abstract thinking).
• Indecisiveness: More aware of many choices and they have
a hard time making decisions.
• Apparent hypocrisy: Have difficulty understanding an ideal
and living up to it.
• Self-consciousness: (imaginary audience); egocentric view
where adolescents assume everyone is looking at
them/thinking the same thing they are.
• Invulnerability: (personal fable); they feel special and
unique and they are not subject to rules; feel invincible 
can lead to risk taking and self-destructive behavior. (“No
one understands me;” “It can’t happen to me.”)