.Outline For Chapter 10

Perspectives on Adolescent Behavior

 

I.                    The Meaning of Adolescence

A.    A transition stage between childhood and adulthood

B.     Puberty

                                                               i.      Period or age at which a person reaches sexual maturity.

C.    Pubescence

                                                               i.      Period during which physical changes relative to sex maturation are taking place.

D.    Maturity

                                                               i.      Age at which a person is considered fully developed socially, intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

E.     Juvenile

                                                               i.      An individual who is not accorded adult status in the eyes of the law.

F.     Transition to Adulthood

                                                               i.      Implies the existence of a social idea of what it means to be an adult.

                                                             ii.      Implies a commonly held view of the criteria that constitutes adult status.

                                                            iii.      Adult status is not merely biological, but it is socially constructed.

                                                           iv.      Criteria considered important in the transition to adulthood may vary between cultures.

                                                             v.      Adolescents expectation for the timing of reaching adulthood in our society have been shown to be related with socio-economic status, parents expectations, and their own educational aspirations.

                                                           vi.      Individualism is the most dominant characteristic of adolescent conception of the transition to adulthood.

II.                 Adolescence and Psychic Disequilibrium

A.    Storm and Stress

                                                               i.      G. Stanley Hall

1.      Described adolescence as a period of great “storm and stress,” corresponding to the time when the human race was in a turbulent, transitional stage on the way to becoming civilized.

2.      Argues that the causes for storm and stress are biologival, resulting from changes at puberty.

3.      Argues that puberty represents a time of emotional upset and instability.

                                                             ii.      Current Research

1.      Rebukes Hall’s idea. Adolescence is now considered much more differentiated.

2.      Differentiation is brought about by biological and psychological influences on development.

3.      Cortisol is one such biological influence.  This hormone helps manage stress. Individuals with different levels of cortisol have different emotional responses to stress.  This links physiological functioning and emotional behavior.

4.      Belief that psychological turmoil is normal in adolescents, leads to the mistaken conclusion that young people with psychological problems will eventually grow out of them.

B.     Psychic Conflict

                                                               i.      Anna Freud

1.      Characterizes adolescence as a period of psychic disequilibrium, emotional conflict, and erratic behavior.

2.      Argues that sexual maturation at puberty causes this disequilibrium.

3.      Argues that instinctual forces that have remained latent since early childhood reappear at puberty.

4.      Argues that the demands of the id during adolescence create conflict with the superego that the ego tries to resolve by making use of defense mechanisms.  If this id-ego-superego conflict is not resolved during adolescence, emotional disturbance results.

5.      Suggests that harmony among the id, ego, and superego is possible and does occur finally in most normal adolescents.

III.               Adolescence and Identity Achievement

A.    Erik Erikson

                                                               i.      Argues that the main psychological task of adolescence is the achievement of identity.

B.     Components of Identity

                                                               i.      Identity has many components such as sexual, social, physical, psychological, moral, ideological, and vocational.  These make up the total self.

                                                             ii.      Identity is personal and individual, depending both on the “I” and the “we,” which represents groups and society.

                                                            iii.      Some components of identity are established before others. Physical and sexual are formulated earlierst. Vocational, moral, and ideological come later in development. Social identity must be dealt with early in development.

                                                           iv.      Vocational, ideological, and moral identities are formulated gradually, after the formal operational stage of cognitive growth has been reached.

                                                             v.      Gender differences are sometimes evident in the identity development process.

                                                           vi.      Adolescents with internalized values that they have accepted for themselves are more likely to be mentally healthy than those who have a negative identity or one that is not truly theirs.

C.    Development of Identity and Behavioral Control

                                                               i.      At first, behavior is controlled by external factors such as immediate situational demands or pressure from others.

                                                             ii.      Later, the individual internalizes the morals, ethics, and goals of significant others.  Since these values might not be accepted as the persons own, behavior is motivated by feelings of guilt, anxiety, and approval.

                                                            iii.      When individuals assimilate and organize values and standards within their core sense of self and become personally valuable, their behavior becomes controlled by those values and the person is more genuinely motivated to follow them.

D.    Psychosocial Moratorium

                                                               i.      Period of adolescence during which the individual is free to experiment to find a socially acceptable identity and role.

                                                             ii.      Erikson argues that the length of adolescence and the degree of emotional conflict experienced by adolescents will vary between societies.

                                                            iii.      Failure to establish an identity during this period causes self doubt and role confusion, which may trigger latent psychological disturbances.

                                                           iv.      Individuals might turn to drugs, alcohol, or delinquency in order to relieve anxiety.

E.     Marcia’s Model of Identity Statuses

                                                               i.      Identity Achievement

1.      Most advanced status. The individual has gone through experimentation and has made well-defined commitments.

                                                             ii.      Moratorium

1.      Precedes identity achievement. Individual is in the exploration period, with commitments only vaguely formed.

                                                            iii.      Foreclosure

1.      Individuals who have gone through little experimentation.  Their parents or others have handed down their commitments and ideologies to them.

                                                           iv.      Identity Diffusion

1.      The least developmentally advanced stage.  Includes individuals who, regardless of experimentation, are uncommitted to any definite directions in their lives.

                                                             v.      The identity statuses do not always develop in exact sequence.

                                                           vi.      Some individuals never make the transition to the moratorium or the identity achievement status.

                                                          vii.      A significant amount of individuals enter adolescence in the diffusion status, and some remain diffused.

                                                        viii.      Certain individuals who had attained achievement status appear to have regressed to a lower status in follow up years.

1.      Such regression suggests that some individuals might go through the developmental identity sequence more than once in a lifetime.

F.     Ethnic Identity

                                                               i.      Minority members are exposed to their ethnic culture and the culture of the larger society.  The way in which the identify and participate in these two cultures is not consistent.

                                                             ii.      Cultural adaptation is the process by which an individual from one culture develops competence in another culture, often the dominant majority culture.

                                                            iii.      Ethnic identity is the sum total of group members’ feelings about those values, symbols, and common histories that identify them as a distinct group.

                                                           iv.      In high school and college, ethnic identity appears to consist of a single factor, including three intercorrelated components.

1.      Positive ethnic attitudes

2.      Ethnic identity achievement

3.      Ethnic behaviors

                                                             v.      Acculturation is the adjustment of minority groups to the cultures of the dominant group.

                                                           vi.      In the early stages identity development, minorities find conflict between their ethnic culture and the values of the larger society.

                                                          vii.      There are four ways in which ethnic group members can participate in a culturally diverse society.

1.      Assimilation: The ethnic group members choose to identify only with the culture of the dominant society.

2.      Integration: Strong identification and involvement with both the dominant and the traditional culture.

3.      Separation: Identification with the ethnic culture, and little or no identification with the dominant culture.

4.      Marginality: Lack of identification with both the ethnic and the dominant culture.

                                                        viii.      Of the four options, integration results in better psychological adjustment and higher self-esteem.

                                                           ix.      Assimilation is associated with lower self-esteem, especially in Asians and foreign-born subjects.

                                                             x.      Of all alternatives, marginality is the least satisfactory alternative.

G.    Black Students

                                                               i.      Tend to encounter more barriers to racial identity development that do white students.

                                                             ii.      Gifted black students tend to experience more psychological and emotional problems than do non-gifted black students.

1.      Gifted black children confront conflicting values from which they much choose when forming a racial identity.

2.      Gifted black students sometimes decided to underachieve in order to not be perceived as “acting white.”

3.      These children will often assume a “race less” persona if they wish to succeed academically.  Group multicultural counseling is especially helpful in aiding them to cope with and appreciate their ability.

H.    Native American Students

                                                               i.      Native American students in schools with mostly Native American student body had mostly Native American peers than they did in a school with a predominantly white student body.

                                                             ii.      Ethnic minority students who can use their ethnicity as a central reference identify more strongly with that ethnic group, have high ethnic pride, and are less likely to pursue other ethnic group contacts.

                                                            iii.      Ethnic minority adolescents with lower ethnic identification are found to possess less ethnic pride ad view themselves as having a more mainstream identity.

IV.              Adolescence and Developmental Tasks

A.    Meaning

                                                               i.      Developmental Tasks

1.      What society demands and what individuals need

2.      The knowledge, attitudes, functions, and skills that individuals must acquire at certain points in their lives through physical maturation, personal effort, and societal expectations.

B.     Eight Major Tasks

                                                               i.      Accepting one’s physique and using the body effectively

1.      Adolescents are concerned about the changes their bodies go through during puberty.

2.      They are concerned about body build, image, and appearance.

3.      They need to understand the patterns of growth of their own bodies, to accept their own physique, to care for their health, and to use their bodies effectively in athletics, recreation, work, etc.

                                                             ii.      Achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults

1.      Adolescents need to achieve autonomy from parents and establish adult relationships with them at the same time.

2.      Adolescents who are in conflict with their parents need help in understanding the situation and learning how to improve it.

                                                            iii.      Achieving a masculine or feminine social-sex role

1.      Adolescents need to reexamine the changing sex roles of their culture and to decide what roles they can adopt.

                                                           iv.      Achieving new and more mature relations with age-mates of both sexes

1.      Adolescents must establish heterosocial friendships.

2.      They also need to develop the social skills necessary to get along with others and to participate in social groups.

                                                             v.      Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior.

1.      Adolescents must assume more responsibility for community and national affairs.

2.      Many adolescents struggle to find their niche in society in a way that gives meaning to their lives.

                                                           vi.      Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behavior

1.      This goal includes the development, adoption, and application of meaning values, morals and ideals in one’s personal life.

                                                          vii.      Preparing for an economic career

1.      Adolescents begin to select long-term tasks by determine life goals, choose a vocation, and prepare for their careers.

                                                        viii.      Preparing for marriage and family life

1.      The majority of adolescents consider a happy marriage and parenthood to be important goals in life.

2.      Before marriage, they need to develop the social skills, positive attitudes, emotional maturity, object knowledge, and empathetic understanding to make marriage work.

V.                 Anthropologists’ Views of Adolescence

A.    Developmental continuity versus discontinuity

                                                               i.      Anthropologists generally reject age and stage theories of development, which say that children go through various stages of development ant different ages.  Instead they emphasize continuity of development.

B.     Mead’s examples of the principle of continuity.

                                                               i.      The submissive role of children in Western culture contrasted to the dominant role of children in primitive society.

1.      Western society children are taught to be submissive by their parents and then expected to be dominating when reaching adulthood.

2.      Samoan children are not dominated by their parents. Older siblings dominate younger siblings, and the older they are, the less siblings that dominate them.

                                                             ii.      The non-responsible role of Western children contrasted to the responsible roles of children in primitive society.

1.      Western children must assume drastically different roles as they grow up by shifting from non-responsible play to responsible work rather suddenly.

2.      Samoan children learn responsibility from an early age.  Work and play often involve the same activity.

                                                            iii.      Dissimilarity of sex roles of children and adults in Western culture contrasted to similarity of sex roles of children and adults in primitive cultures.

1.      In Western culture, infant sexuality is denied, and adolescent sexuality is repressed.

2.      Samoan children experience no real discontinuity of sex roles as they pass from childhood to adulthood. They have the opportunity to explore and become familiar with sex with almost no taboos.

C.    Cultural Influences

                                                               i.      Anthropologists say that storm and stress during adolescence is not inevitable.

                                                             ii.      The strains and stresses of pubescent physical changes may be cause by negative teachings of the culture and not by any inherited biological tendencies.

D.    Generation Gap

                                                               i.      Anthropologists describe the many conditions in Western culture that create the generation gap.  Such conditions are pluralistic value system, rapid social change, and modern technology that make the world appear too complex and unstable to provide adolescents with a stable frame of reference.

                                                             ii.      Early physiological puberty and the prolongation of adolescence allow many years for the development of a peer-group culture in which adolescent values may be in conflict with those of the adult world.

                                                            iii.      Mead argues that parents and offspring would get along better if parents gave children more freedom to make their choices to live their own lives, by requiring less conformity and less dependency, and by tolerating individual differences within the family.

                                                           iv.      Mead argues that adolescents should be allowed to have sex and marry earlier on, but parenthood should be postponed.  Also, adolescents should be given more responsibilities within the community.