Chapter Ten

Becoming an Adult: Physical, Cognitive, and Personality

Development In Young Adulthood

10.1 Emerging Adulthood: Learning Objectives

• What role transitions mark entry into adulthood?

• How does going to college reflect the transition to adulthood?

• What behavioral criteria mark the transition to adulthood?

• How does achieving financial independence reflect the transition to adulthood?

Emerging Adulthood

• No definitive criteria for marking when one becomes an adult, especially in the West

• Emerging adulthood: a relatively new term referring to the period when people are not adolescents but are not fully adults– Encompasses the years between late

adolescence and early 30s– Social and demographic trends since the

1970s have created this new developmental period

Role Transitions Marking Adulthood

• Role transitions: new responsibilities and duties that mark movement into the next developmental stages (e.g., marriage)

Cross-Cultural Evidence of Role Transitions

• Rites of passage: important rituals marking initiation into adulthood (e.g., college graduation or marriage ceremonies)– May last for hours or days

• Many cultures employ religious rituals (e.g., bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs)

• Rituals in non-Western cultures change little with time and provide continuity – Some tribes’ rituals involve pain or

mutilation

Going to College

• College attendance: ±10% in early 1900s, but ±67% today

• Increasing age, racial, and ethnic diversity– Returning students: over age 25

• Problem-solvers, self-directed, pragmatic, stressed; middle-aged females report self-discovery

• College success: increases with student’s psychological well-being and when all parties take responsibility and are supportive

Behavioral Changes: Risk-Taking

• Edgework: living on the boundary between life and death in physically or psychologically risky situations

• Gender differences in dealing with edgework– Men do not rehearse these; are highly

confident– Women rehearse to ease their initially

lower confidence

Behavioral Changes: Establishing Intimacy

• Intimacy vs. isolation: major psychosocial conflict during young adulthood (Erikson’s 6th stage)

• Intimacy involves creating a shared identity with another

• Stronger sense of one’s own identity is needed to achieve this intimacy

• Conflicting results– Only some research shows stronger

identities to predict higher intimacy

Launching One’s Financial Independence

• Financial independence – A major marker of becoming an adult– Gained earlier for 1/3 of high school

graduates or those not finishing high school

– Facilitated by finding a niche through full- or part-time jobs and the military

– May start later for college graduates, because many return to live with parents after graduation

So When Do People Become Adults?

• Quarterlife crisis: similar to a midlife crisis, but occurs in one’s 20s– A relatively new term for a period of self-

exploration, search for meaning, and adjustment to daily hassles or life challenges

10.2 Physical Development & Health:Learning Objectives

• In what respects are young adults at their physical peak?

• How healthy are young adults in general?• How do smoking, drinking alcohol, and

nutrition affect young adults’ health?• How does the health of young adults differ as

a function of socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity?

Growth, Strength, and Physical Functioning

• Height is at its tallest during young adulthood• Physical strength, coordination, and dexterity

in both sexes peaks in the late 20s and early 30s

• Most senses remain acute through to middle age or old age– Hearing begins to decline in the late 20s,

especially for high-pitched tones

Health Status

• 94% of young American adults say their health is good or better

• Leading cause of death in early 20s: accidents• Gender and ethnic-related prevalence

– Young adult men 2.5 times higher than women

– 2-2.5 times higher for African- and Latino-American than European-American men

– 2 times higher for European-American than Asian- or Pacific-Islander-American men

Lifestyle Factors

• Smoking– Nicotine is a known potent teratogen– Smoking is the leading contributor to health

problems in smokers– Quitting smoking is usually beneficial,

regardless of how or when it happens• Nonsmokers also at high risk for diseases

– Over 40% are exposed to second-hand smoke

Drinking Alcohol

• Occasional drinking, while not driving, is not known to seriously affect health– ≤ 2 glasses of wine or beer/day

• Heavy or “binge” drinking is costly to health, hampers productivity, and can promote victimization (e.g., assaults, rape)

• Binge drinking: consuming ≥5 (men) or ≥4 (women) in a row within 2 weeks

• Binge drinking is a major international health concern, especially among college students

Drinking Alcohol: Alcoholism

• Alcoholism: an addiction involving physical dependence on alcohol and withdrawal symptoms when not drinking

• Excessive, long-term drinking affects brain– Important neurotransmitters become

dangerously depleted or increased• Causes alcohol cravings meant to

reduce negative, or increase, positive feelings

• Treating alcoholism long-term is challenging

Nutrition

• Metabolism: how much energy the body needs; slows down with age

• Should limit intake of saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, salt, and alcohol

• Obesity: growing health problem• Body mass index (BMI): ratio of body weight

to height, related to total body fat – ≤ 25 is healthy– Health risks increase the higher one’s BMI

Nutrition: Cholesterol

• Low density lipoproteins (LDL): cholesterols impeding blood flow by causing fatty deposits to accumulate in arteries

• High density lipoproteins (HDL): cholesterols that keep arteries clear and break down LDLs

• LDL/HDL ratio is important to health – LDL should be < 160 mg/dL– HDL should be > 40 mg/dL in men– HDL should be > 50 mg/dL in women

Social, Gender, and Ethnic Issues in Health

• Social factors– People in poverty are less likely to obtain

adequate healthcare and are more often in poor health

– People with better income as a result of education are less likely to be ill and less likely to die from chronic illness

• Gender– U.S. women live longer than men and are

less likely to die from homicides

Ethnic Group Differences

• In the U.S., the residents of inner-city neighborhoods have the poorest health conditions

• African-American men in large urban areas have lower life expectancy even than men in developing countries– Poverty plays a major role– Lesser likelihood of being treated for

chronic diseases

10.3 Cognitive Development:Learning Objectives

• What is intelligence in adulthood?• What are primary and secondary mental

abilities? How do they change?• What are fluid and crystallized intelligence?

How do they change?• How has neuroscience research furthered our

understanding of intelligence in adulthood?

10.3 Cognitive Development:Learning Objectives (cont’d.)

• What is postformal thought? How does it differ from formal operations?

• How do emotion and logic become integrated in adulthood?

How Should We View Intelligence in Adults?

• Most theories are multidimensional, though there is disagreement as to the dimensions

• Baltes et al.’s three dimensions– Multidirectionality: some aspects improve

while others decline during adulthood– Interindividual variability: patterns of

change vary between people– Plasticity: abilities can be modified under

the right conditions

Primary – and Secondary Mental Abilities

• Primary mental abilities: groups of related skills organized into hypothetical constructs– Number – Word fluency– Verbal meaning – Inductive reasoning– Spatial orientation

• Secondary mental abilities: clusters of related primary abilities used as a framework for describing intelligence’s structure; difficult to measure directly

Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence

• Fluid and crystallized intelligence are secondary mental abilities

• Fluid intelligence: being a flexible, adaptive thinker, who can make inferences, and understand concepts’ relationships – Declines throughout adulthood

• Crystallized intelligence: knowledge of facts, definitions, language, etc., acquired by life experience– Improves throughout adulthood

Neuroscience Research and Intelligence

• Parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT): intelligence comes from distributed and integrated networks of neurons in the parietal and frontal lobes

• Research supports the P-FIT model• Still controversial

Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood

• Postformal thought• Reflective judgment• Prereflective reasoning• Quasi-reflective reasoning• Reflective reasoning

Integrating Emotion and Logic in Life Problems

• In postformal thinking, decision-making and problem-solving emphasize: – Change and context-dependent principles

instead of conformity and context-free principle

– Pragmatics of the situation, emotion, and social facets more than logic alone

– The relative rather than absolute nature of rules and norms

Implicit Social Beliefs

• Implicit social beliefs (ISBs): emotionally laden mental representations of beliefs, rules, and values– Representation in memory is usually

outside of conscious awareness– Differ in content, strength, and likelihood of

being activated in a particular situation– Activation is likelier when the ISB is very

strong

10.4 Personality in Young Adulthood:Learning Objectives

• What is the life-span construct? How do adults create scenarios and life stories?

• What are possible selves? Do they show differences during adulthood?

• What are personal control beliefs?

Creating Scenarios and Life Stories

• Life-span construct: one’s unified sense of the past, present, and future

• Scenario: expectations of how one’s future life will play out– Helps people formulate a game plan and a

way to track progress• Social clock: a personal timetable tagging the

time or age by which future goals or events are to be completed

McAdams’s Life-Story Model

• Life story: a personal narrative organizing past events into a coherent sequence reflecting one’s identity, ideology, and goals– Agency and communion are themes– Attitudes toward one’s story are conveyed

through emotions (e.g., optimism)– Begins forming in late adolescence – From middle age onward, reshaped to form

generativity

Possible Selves

• Possible selves: representations of one’s hoped-for-selves and feared-for-selves

• With increasing age, important possible selves concern personal matters more than family ones

• Young and middle-aged adults are more optimistic about achieving hoped-for-selves

• Much older adults perceive the self as remaining stable – Physical health is an important feared self

Personal Control Beliefs

• Personal control beliefs: extent to which performance depends on own effort or ability rather than outside forces

• Greatly affects personality, social, health, intellectual, and career outcomes

• Inconsistent research results• Control beliefs vary depending upon the

domain in which they are studied (e.g., intelligence vs. health)

Personal Control Beliefs: Domains

• Examples of domain-specific findings: – People’s perceived control of marital

happiness increasing with age– One’s development declining with age

• One domain-nonspecific finding is that satisfaction is greater for: – Younger adults who attribute success to

their effort– Older adults who attribute success to their

ability

Personal Control Beliefs: Research

• Some research shows four types of control experience– Control from within oneself– Control over oneself– Control over the environment– Control from the environment

• Other research distinguishes two types of control– Primary versus secondary control

Personal Control Beliefs: Primary and Secondary Control

• Primary control: modifying the external environment to fit one’s needs and goals (e.g., asking a teacher for tutoring)

• Secondary control: modifying one’s cognitions, goals, or behavioral standards (e.g., attributing failure on a test to task difficulty instead of ability)

• Primary and secondary control operate in parallel during first half of life; primary declines in midlife