Chapter 12
Socioemotional Development in
Early Adulthood
PowerPoints developed by Nicholas Greco IV,
College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Stability and Change from
Childhood to Adulthood
 For adults, socioemotional development
revolves around adaptively integrating our
emotional experiences into enjoyable
relationships with others on a daily basis
 The first 20 years of life are not
meaningless in predicting an adult’s
socioemotional life
 Attachment plays an important part in socioemotional
development
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Stability and Change from
Childhood to Adulthood
 Adult’s attachment is categorized as secure,
avoidant, or anxious:
 Secure attachment style
Adults have positive views of relationships
 Avoidant attachment style
Adults are hesitant to get involved in romantic
relationships
 Anxious attachment style
Adults demand closeness, are less trusting,
and more emotional, jealous, and possessive
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Love and Close Relationships
 Love -- vast and complex territory of
human behavior, spanning a range of
relationships that includes friendship,
romantic love, affectionate love, and
consummate love
intimacy -- self-disclosure and the sharing of
private thoughts
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Erikson’s Stage: Intimacy
Versus Isolation
 After individuals are well on their way to
establishing stable and successful identities,
they enter the sixth developmental stage, which
is intimacy versus isolation
Finding oneself by losing oneself in another
person
 If a person fails to develop an intimate
relationship in early adulthood, according to
Erikson, isolation results
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Intimacy and Independence
 Development in early adulthood often
involves balancing intimacy and
commitment with independence and
freedom
 Intimacy and commitment, and
independence and freedom are important
themes of development that are worked
and reworked throughout the adult years
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Friendship
 Friendship plays an important role in
development throughout the human life
span
Women have more close friends and their
friendships involve more self-disclosure and
exchange of mutual support
Talk is central to their relationships
Women share many aspects of their
experiences, thoughts, and feelings
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Romantic Love
 Some friendships evolve into romantic
love
Also called passionate love, or eros
 Romantic love has strong components of
sexuality and infatuation
Often predominates in the early part of a love
relationship
Sexual desire is the most important ingredient
of romantic love
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Affectionate Love
 Affectionate love -- type of love that
occurs when someone desires to
have the other person near and has a
deep, caring affection for the person
also called companionate love
 As love matures, passion tends to
give way to affection
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Consummate Love and
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
 Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of
love in which love can be thought of as a
triangle with three main dimensions—
passion, intimacy, and commitment
Passion is physical and sexual attraction to
another
Intimacy relates to the emotional feelings of
warmth, closeness, and sharing in a
relationship
Commitment is the cognitive appraisal of the
relationship and the intent to maintain the
relationship
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Sternberg’s Triangle of Love
 INSERT FIGURE 12.1 HERE
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Adult Lifestyles: Single
Adults
 More adults are remaining single longer today
 In the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic rise in
the percentage of single adults
 Advantages
 Freedom to make decisions about one’s life course,
pursue one’s own schedule, privacy
 Common problems
 Loneliness
 Forming intimate relationships with other adults
 Finding a niche in a society that is marriage-oriented
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Cohabitation
 Cohabitation -- living together in a sexual
relationship without being married
cohabitation has changed
many couples view their cohabitation as an
ongoing lifestyle
 Disadvantages
 Disapproval by parents
 Difficulty owning property jointly
 Legal rights on the dissolution of the relationship are
less certain
 Elevated risk of partner violence
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The Increase in Cohabitation in
the United States
 INSERT FIGURE 12.2 HERE
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Married Adults
 Changing norm of male-female equality
means marital relationships are more fragile
and intense
 More than 90 percent of U.S. women still
marry at some point in their lives;
projections indicate that in the future this
rate will drop into 80–90 percent range
 Marriages in adolescence are more likely to
end in divorce than marriages in adulthood
 Average duration of a marriage in the
United States is currently just over nine
years
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The Benefits of a Good
Marriage
 Individuals who are happily married live
longer, healthier lives than either divorced
individuals or those who are unhappily
married
 People in unhappy marriages may
experience numerous physical ailments,
such as high blood pressure and heart
disease, as well as psychological
problems such as anxiety, depression, and
substance abuse
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Divorced Adults
 Increases in divorce are correlated with
youthful marriage, low educational level,
low income, not having a religious
affiliation, divorced parents, having a baby
before marriage
 These characteristics also increase the
likelihood of divorce:
 Alcoholism, psychological problems, domestic
violence, infidelity, and inadequate division of
household labor
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Remarried Adults
 Divorced adults remarry within three years
after their divorce
Men remarry sooner than women
Men with higher incomes are more likely to
remarry
Remarriage occurs sooner for partners who
initiate a divorce
Adults who get remarried have a lower level
of mental health (depression)
Financial status improves after remarrying
More shared decision making
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Gay and Lesbian Adults
 The legal and social context of marriage creates
barriers to breaking up that do not exist for
same-sex partners
 But in other ways, researchers have found that
gay and lesbian relationships are similar to
heterosexual relationships in their satisfactions,
loves, joys, and conflict
 Contrary to stereotypes, one partner is
masculine and the other feminine in only a small
percentage of gay male and lesbian couples
 Only a small segment has a large number of
sexual partners
Prefer a long-term, committed relationship
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Making Marriage Work
 Gottman found a number of main
principles determining whether a marriage
will work:
Establishing love maps
Nurturing fondness and admiration
Turning toward each other instead of away
Letting your partner influence you
Creating shared meaning
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Becoming a Parent
 By giving birth to fewer children, women
free up time for other endeavors
 Working women invest less actual time in
the child’s development
 Men are apt to invest a greater amount of
time in fathering
 Parental care is often supplemented by
institutional care
 There are advantages and disadvantages
to having children early and later in life
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Strategies for Divorced Adults
 Hetherington recommends these:
Think of divorce as a chance to grow
personally and to develop more positive
relationships
Make decisions carefully
Focus more on the future than the past
Use your strengths and resources to cope
with difficulties
Don’t expect to be successful and happy in
everything you do
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Gender and Communication
 Tannen distinguishes two ways of
communications:
Rapport talk -- language of conversation; a
way of establishing connections and
negotiating relationships
Report talk -- talk that is designed to give
information; includes public speaking
Women enjoy rapport talk more than report
talk; men’s lack of interest in rapport talk
bothers many women
Men prefer to engage in report talk
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