CHAPTER 9 –AUTONOMYADOLESCENCE, 11E

CHAPTER 9 –
AUTONOMY
AD
OL
ES
CE
NC
E,
11
E
L A
U R
E N
C E
S
T E
I N
B E
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Copyright © 2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or
distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw -Hill

Education.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
CHAPTER 9 OVERVIEW
Autonomy as an Adolescent Issue
The Development of Emotional Autonomy
§ Emotional autonomy and detachment
§ Emotional autonomy and individuation
§ Research on emotional autonomy
§ Emotional autonomy and parenting practices
CHAPTER 9 OVERVIEW
The Development of Behavioral Autonomy
§ Changes in decision-making abilities
§ When do adolescents make decisions as well as adults?
§ Changes in susceptibility to influence
§ Ethnic and cultural differences in expectations for autonomy
The Development of Cognitive Autonomy
§ Moral development during adolescence
§ Prosocial reasoning, prosocial behavior, and volunteerism
§ Political thinking during adolescence
§ Religious beliefs during adolescence

AUTONOMY AS AN ADOLESCENT ISSUE
Independence
§ An individual’s capacity to behave on his or her own.
Autonomy
§ Emotional components (feeling separate from parents)
§ Behavioral components (the growth of independent decision
making)
§ Cognitive components (developing personal beliefs and
values)
AUTONOMY AS AN ADOLESCENT ISSUE
Early adolescence is a period of growing independence and
autonomy.
Establishing healthy sense of autonomy is actually a lifelong
process.
Puberty and the development of autonomy:
§ cognitive changes
§ biological changes
§ social changes

THREE TYPES OF AUTONOMY
Emotional Autonomy
§ Gaining emotional independence in relationships with others,
especially parents.
Behavioral Autonomy
§ Making independent decisions and following through on them.
Cognitive Autonomy
§ Developing an independent set of beliefs and principles,
resisting peer
and parental pressures.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL
AUTONOMY
Psychoanalytic Theory:
Physical changes of puberty disrupt family system.
Resurgence of sexual impulses increases family tensions.
Detachment:
§ Adolescents are driven to separate emotionally from parents;
turn to

peers.
§ Relationships with parents severed.
§ View conflict as normal part of development in adolescence.
RESEARCH ON DETACHMENT
Research studies have not supported the “storm and stress” of
adolescence.
High levels of adolescent-parent tension are not the “norm.”
Parents and adolescence may bicker; however, no significant
emotional distance.
Research supports a transformation of family relationships, not
a
breaking off or severing.
EMOTIONAL AUTONOMY AND
INDIVIDUATION
Modern Theories: Individuation
§ Process of individuation begins during infancy.
§ Does not involve stress or turmoil.

§ Acceptance of responsibility for choices and actions.
RESEARCH ON EMOTIONAL AUTONOMY
Measure emotional autonomy by examining extent to which:
§ teens de-idealize parents.
§ teens see parents as people.
§ adolescents depend on themselves, rather than on parents.
§ the adolescent feels individuated within the relationship with
his/her
parents.
DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL
AUTONOMY
What triggers individuation?
§ Two competing hypotheses:
§ Changes in teen’s appearance provoke changes in how teen
views
self and how parents view teen; alters parent-adolescent
interactions.

§ Social-cognitive development stimulates movement toward
individuation.
EMOTIONAL AUTONOMY AND PARENTING
PRACTICES
Adolescents’ mental health is best when their desire for
autonomy
matches their parents’ willingness to grant autonomy.
Healthy individuation and positive mental health are fostered by
close, not distant, family relationships.
§ Conditions that encourage both individuation and emotional
closeness
facilitate autonomy.
§ Authoritative parenting
EMOTIONAL AUTONOMY AND
PARENTING PRACTICES
Figure 1: Although adolescents in different
cultures receive different degrees of

parental support for becoming
autonomous, the correlation between
autonomy support from parents and
adolescents’ life satisfaction is similar in
different cultural contexts.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
BEHAVIORAL AUTONOMY
Decision-making abilities improve across adolescence.
Older adolescents more likely to:
§ consider both the risks and benefits associated with the
decisions they
make.
§ weigh the long-term consequences of their choices.
Improved decision-making abilities are likely due to:
§ decline in the salience of immediate rewards.
§ improvement in ability to control impulses.
CHANGES IN DECISION MAKING
More sophisticated reasoning leads adolescents to hold multiple
viewpoints in mind simultaneously, allowing them to compare

different perspectives.
§ Crucial for weighing opinions and advice of others.
§ Early adolescence: more drawn to potential benefits of a
decision
rather than the potential costs.
§ Late adolescence: these factors are weighed evenly.
The ability to control impulses also influences decision making.
CHANGES IN DECISION
MAKING
Figure 2: Younger adolescents are
especially drawn to immediate rewards.
This graph shows age differences in the
amount of money individuals would settle
for if they could have it immediately,
versus waiting one year for $1,000.
WHEN DO ADOLESCENTS MAKE
DECISIONS AS WELL AS ADULTS?
Difficult to determine when adolescents can make legal

decisions
as well as adults.
§ Society draws the line between children and adults in
different places
for different things:
§ access to birth control
§ driving
§ purchasing alcohol or cigarettes
§ tried in adult court
WHEN DO ADOLESCENTS MAKE
DECISIONS AS WELL AS ADULTS?
Adolescent decision making is product of cognitive abilities and
psychosocial factors.
Develop along different timetables.
Resolve this conflict by looking at the developmental timeline
of
the specific skill that is relevant to the topic of decision making
in question.

CHANGES IN SUSCEPTIBILITY TO
INFLUENCE
Conformity to peers is higher during middle adolescence than
later
adolescence.
§ Parents are more influential regarding long-term issues, basic
values.
§ Peers’ opinions are more influential for day-to-day matters
(music
tastes or clothing style).
False confessions to police officers.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN
SUSCEPTIBILITY TO INFLUENCE
Girls less susceptible to peer pressure than boys.
Black adolescents less susceptible than adolescents from other
ethnic backgrounds.
Asian American adolescents highly susceptible to peer
influence.
Youth with authoritative parents show better abilities to resist
peer
influences.
Brain imaging studies show individual differences in neural
activity

are related to individual differences in susceptibility to peer
influence.
CHANGES IN SUSCEPTIBILITY
TO INFLUENCE
Figure 3: Adolescents are more susceptible to peer
influence than adults are. This figure shows two brain
scans, one taken while adolescents were playing a
driving game when there friends were watching, and
the other taken when the adolescents were playing
alone. The area surrounded by the yellow rectangle is
a part of the brain that is activated when we
experience reward. One reason adolescents may
behave more recklessly when they are with their
friends is that the presence of peers may make them
pay more attention to the potential rewards of a risky
choice.
ETHNIC AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN
EXPECTATIONS FOR AUTONOMY
White adolescents and their parents have earlier expectations

for
autonomy than do Asian adolescents and parents.
In general, very few (if any) sex or birth order differences in
behavioral autonomy.
§ Depends on the number of sons and daughters in the home.
§ Depends on parents’ attitudes toward sex roles.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE
AUTONOMY
Changes in the adolescent’s beliefs, opinions, and values.
Three trends in adolescents’ beliefs:
§ Adolescents’ beliefs about moral, political, and religious
issues
become more abstract.
§ Beliefs become increasingly rooted in general principles.
§ Beliefs become founded in the young person’s own values.
MORAL DEVELOPMENT DURING
ADOLESCENCE

How individuals think about moral dilemmas and make moral
judgments.
Prosocial behavior
§ Acts people engage in to help others.
The dominant theoretical viewpoint in the study of moral
reasoning
is grounded in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Researchers assess individuals’ moral reasoning by examining
their responses to hypothetical dilemmas about difficult real -
world situations.
STAGES IN MORAL REASONING
KOHLBERG’S THREE LEVELS OF
MORAL REASONING
Preconventional Moral Reasoning
(worrying about punishment/reward)
Conventional Moral Reasoning
(following societal rules and norms)
Postconventional Moral Reasoning
(most abstract and advanced)

MORAL DEVELOPMENT DURING
ADOLESCENCE
Recent studies have confirmed Kohlberg’s theory.
§ Moral reasoning becomes more principled over the course of
childhood and adolescence.
§ Postconventional reasoning is relatively rare.
Research has shown that moral behavior does not always match
moral reasoning.
§ Contextual factors influence how a person acts when facing
moral
dilemmas in the real world.
§ Moral disengagement
PROSOCIAL REASONING, PROSOCIAL
BEHAVIOR, AND VOLUNTEERISM
Changes in prosocial reasoning
§ Prosocial behavior (helping others)
§ Prosocial reasoning becomes more sophisticated.
§ Changes in actual prosocial behavior are not consistently
found in

adolescence
§ Very few adolescents are engaged in political affairs.
PROSOCIAL REASONING, PROSOCIAL
BEHAVIOR, AND VOLUNTEERISM
Figure 4: Positive parenting promotes
prosocial behavior by increasing
adolescents’ abilities to regulate their
emotions and empathize with others.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
One of the most obvious ways in which adolescents can
demonstrate prosocial behavior is through various types of
civic engagement.
§ Civic engagement
§ Involvement in political and community affairs, as reflected
in
knowledge about politics and current affairs, participation in
conventional and alternative political activities, and engaging in

community service.
Service learning
§ The process of learning through movement in community
service.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Involvement in community service leads to:
§ short-term gains in social responsibility.
§ gains in commitment to tolerance, equal opportunity, and
cultural
diversity.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Figure 5: With age, adolescence become
less likely to share equally with others,
especially when doing so may be costly to
oneself.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Figure 6: Changes in the proportion of
American adolescents who describe
various life goals as important.
POLITICAL THINKING DURING
ADOLESCENCE
Less is known about the development of political thinking
during
adolescence than about moral development, but political
thinking, like
moral reasoning, becomes more principled, more abstract, and
more
independent during the adolescent years.
ADOLESCENCE

During adolescence, political thinking becomes:
§ more abstract.
§ less authoritarian and less rigid.
§ more principled (an increase in a consistent set of attitudes;
an
ideology).
§ However, gaps between political thinking in hypothetical
situations and
adolescents’ actual political attitudes and behavior.
ADOLESCENCE
Figure 7: Socioeconomic differences in
adolescents’ explanations for poverty and
wealth.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Figure 8: Changes over time in
adolescents’ involvement in conventional
political activities (e.g., voting), alternative

political activities (e.g., demonstrations),
and community service
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS DURING
ADOLESCENCE
Across adolescence, religious beliefs:
§ become more abstract, more principled, and more
independent.
The importance of religion—and participation in an organized
religion—declines.
ADOLESCENCE
Two interconnected components:
§ Religiosity
§ may be more closely related to identity development.
§ Spirituality
§ may be more closely linked to the development of cognitive
autonomy.

ADOLESCENCE
Figure 9: The proportion of adolescents
from different countries who report that
God is very important in their life.
ADOLESCENCE
Please insert Figure 10: Weekly religious
attendance among U.S. 8th-, 10th-, and
12th-graders.
IMPACT OF RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT ON
DEVELOPMENT

Compared to non-religious adolescents, religious adolescents
are:
§ better adjusted, less depressed, less likely to engage in
premarital
sexual intercourse, less likely to use drugs, and less likely to
engage in
delinquent behavior.
§ May be because religious adolescents have other positive
influences in their life that promote positive development.
§ However, abstaining from delinquent behavior and sexual
behavior
may be directly linked to religious beliefs.
Article #1
Two 13-Year-Old Girls Are Being Tried As Adults. Here’s Why
That Matters.
POLITICS
08/12/2015 07:50 pm ET Updated Jan 03, 2017
By Dayana Morales Gomez
On Monday, a Wisconsin judge ruled that the two 13-year-old
girls accused of attempting to murder a
classmate to impress fictional Internet character Slender Man
will be tried as adults.
The teens face dramatically different treatment because of the

judge’s decision. Children tried as adults
face longer sentences and fewer resources while incarcerated,
and they’re more likely to be assaulted in
adult prisons than juvenile facilities.
If convicted in juvenile court, the 13-year-olds would have
faced detention until the age of 18, followed
by intense supervision and services when released back into
their communities. In adult court, they face
up to 65 years in prison. They may also be sentenced to a
combination of prison and extended supervision
under the Department of Corrections.
In Wisconsin, any juvenile over 10 years old charged with
homicide or attempted homicide is
automatically tried in adult court, but defense lawyers may
request a trial in juvenile court for youth under
16. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren said
Monday that defense lawyers “failed to
convince him” the cases should be moved, according to the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
One of two 12-year-old girls accused of stabbing a classmate to
please the fictional character Slender Man
is led into a courtroom at the Waukesha County Courthouse in
Waukesha, Wis. Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014.

Her attorney challenged a doctor’s report that said she was
competent to stand trial. A competency
hearing was scheduled for Dec. 18, the same day as a
competency hearing for the other girl accused in the
case. (AP Photo/Waukesha Freeman)
Lighter sentences in juvenile court are an acknowledgement of
adolescents’ changing brains and bodies,
according to Mishi Faruqee, a juvenile justice policy strategist
at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The recognition is that when they’re 18 or when they’re 21
they can really be different people,” Faruqee
told The Huffington Post. “The juvenile justice system can still
hold young people accountable for their
actions.”
Bohren decided to keep the girls in adult court because he was
worried the girls would not receive proper
mental health treatment or supervision upon their release,
according to reports. A longer sentence would
“protect people longer,” he said.
There’s a tradeoff, though: Adult prisons aren’t designed with
kids in mind.
In Wisconsin, youth in juvenile facilities have access to a wide
array of resources and workshops. The

Division of Juvenile Corrections of Wisconsin has offerings
including dialectical behavior therapy, which
helps juveniles learn mindfulness, distress tolerance and
emotion regulation; education; family services,
including bus services for families and therapy; a foster
grandparent program as mentorship; a juvenile
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/section/politics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/dayana-morales-gomez
http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/girls-in-slender-man-
stabbing-case-to-remain-in-adult-court-b99553843z1-
321293491.html
http://www.mlive.com/news/us-
world/index.ssf/2015/08/wisconsin_13-year-olds_could_f.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-
Update/2015/0217/Slender-Man-stabbing-Should-juvenile-
defendants-be-tried-as-adults-video
http://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/tryingjuvasadult/states/wi.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/girls-in-slender-man-
stabbing-case-to-remain-in-adult-court-b99553843z1-
321293491.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/decision-due-moving-
slender-man-cases-juvenile-court-32984259
http://doc.wi.gov/documents/web/familiesvisitors/juvenileservic
es/DJC%20Overview%20of%20Services.pdf
cognitive intervention program, focusing on cognitive

restructuring in adolescents; and a victim impact
program, which emphasizes the rights of victims and identifies
the harmful effects of crime.
Adult facilities offer some overlapping resources, but are
targeted at older populations. Most offerings are
for technical education training. Treatment offerings are for
things like anger management and cognitive
intervention, but many of the violence programs cater only to
men. Additionally, not all programs are
available in all of the state’s 38 facilities. By contrast, there are
two formal holding facilities in the state
for juveniles, one for boys and another for girls, plus an
alternative academy for boys. Almost all juvenile
programs are offered at both the boys’ and girls’ facilities.
Holding youth in adult facilities isn’t a new practice, but it
recently has been gaining more national
attention.
Last month, HuffPost’s Dana Liebelson reported about the lives
of youth in the adult prison system, some
of whom had experienced abuse and almost all of whom had
contemplated suicide. Staff in juvenile
facilities are “more likely to be trained to deal with teens ,” she
wrote, and minors in adult prisons are

more likely to attempt suicide than their counterparts in
juvenile detention. And after they are released,
those who serve in the adult system are “77 percent more likely
to be arrested for a violent felony than
those who were sent to juvenile institutions.”
Youth are also five times more likely to experience sexual
assault in adult prisons versus juvenile
facilities, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
One of two 12-year-old girls accused of stabbing a classmate to
please the fictional horror character
Slender Man is led into a courtroom for a hearing Wednesday,
Nov. 12, 2014, in Waukesha, Wis. A state
doctor believes the girl’s mental condition has improved and
that she is fit to stand trial. (AP
Photo/Waukesha Freeman, Charles Auer)
Poet and filmmaker James Burns spent time in both juvenile and
adult facilities as a minor. Since turning
his life around, he’s become an advocate for those inside the
system. He spoke to HuffPost about what he
views as the most stark differences in the two systems.
“In the adult system, there is no rehabilitation,” Burns said. “I
know there are some programs that exist,
but those programs are very limited. Often times people come

into the adult system and they come out
with more problems than they had before they went in. … The
juvenile system, while it is still broken in
many ways, still offers more support than what an adult facility
has. They’re more geared towards treating
juveniles.”
The two Waukesha girls are accused of stabbing a fellow
classmate with the intent of murdering her. The
girls allegedly planned the deed as a tribute to the fictional
Slender Man, a paranormal creature who has
supposedly been in existence for centuries. He is “rumored to
kill children exclusively,” according to
Creepypasta Wiki, a website that collects information on creepy
Internet memes. The girls discovered
Slender Man on the site and decided to kill their friend to show
devotion to the figure.
Despite being stabbed 19 times, the victim managed to crawl
out of the woods where she had been
abandoned. She was taken to a hospital and survived.
Source
http://doc.wi.gov/Documents/WEB/ABOUT/OVERVIEW/OPER
ATIONS/ADULTINSTITUTIONS/Opportunities%20 Options%2
0Resource%20Guide.pdf

ATIONS/ADULTINSTITUTIONS/Opportunities%20Options%2
ATIONS/ADULTINSTITUTIONS/Opportunities%20Options%2
http://doc.wi.gov/families-visitors/find-facility/lincoln-hills-
school
http://doc.wi.gov/families-visitors/find-facility/copper-lake-
school
http://doc.wi.gov/families-visitors/juvenile-services/The-Grow-
Academy
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cruel-and-all-too-
usual/
http://www.eji.org/childrenprison
http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/waukesha-police-2-12-
year-old-girls-plotted-for-months-to-kill-friend-b99282655z1-
261534171.html
http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Creepypasta_Wiki
261534171.html
261534171.html
261534171.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/slenderman-youth-adults-
prison-wisconsin_us_55cbc70ce4b0cacb8d32ee35

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