The document discusses adolescent emotional and social development through Erikson's theory of identity versus role confusion, highlighting the complexities of self-understanding and self-esteem during this stage. It outlines the processes of identity formation, the significance of exploration and commitment, and the impact of parenting and societal influences on identity development. Additionally, it explores Kohlberg's theory of moral development, detailing the various stages of moral reasoning and the critique of gender differences in moral judgments.

1. Emotional and Social
Development In Adolescence
Developmental Psychology II

2. Erikson’s Theory: Identity versus Role
Confusion
• Erikson was the first to recognize identity as the major personality achievement of
adolescence and as a crucial step toward becoming a productive adult
• Constructing an identity involves defining who you are, what you value, and the
directions you choose to pursue in life
• Erikson believed that teenagers in complex societies experience an identity crisis, a
temporary period of distress followed by settling on values and goals
• Identity versus role confusion
• If young people’s earlier conflicts were resolved negatively or if society limits their
choices to ones that do not match their abilities and desires, they may appear shallow,
directionless, and unprepared for the challenges of adulthood
• Current theorists agree that questioning of values and priorities is necessary for a mature
identity
• But they see this process not as a “crisis” for most young people, but simply a process of
exploration followed by commitment

3. Self-Understanding
• During adolescence, the young person’s vision of the self becomes
more complex, well-organized, and consistent
• Compared with younger children, adolescents have more or less
positive feelings about an increasing variety of aspects of the self
• Over time, they form a balanced, integrated representation of their
strengths and limitations
• Changes in self-concept and self-esteem set the stage for developing
a unified personal identity

4. Changes in Self-Concept
• By the end of middle childhood, children can describe themselves in terms of personality traits
• In early adolescence, they unify separate traits (“smart” and “talented”) into more abstract descriptors
(“intelligent”)
• But, these generalizations are not interconnected and are often contradictory
• Ex year olds might mention opposing traits like “intelligent” and “dork,” “shy,” and “outgoing”
• These disparities result from the expansion of adolescents’ social world, which creates pressure to display
different selves in different contexts
• From middle to late adolescence, cognitive changes enable teenagers to combine their traits into an
organized system
• Compared with school-age children, teenagers place more emphasis on social virtues, such as being friendly,
kind, and cooperative
• Traits that reflect a concern with being viewed positively by others
• Among older adolescents, personal and moral values are key themes
• As young people revise their views of themselves to include enduring beliefs and plans, they move toward
the unity of self that is central to identity development

5. Changes in Self-Esteem
• In adolescence, young people add several new dimensions of self-evaluation: close friendship,
romantic appeal, and job competence
• For most young people, self-esteem rises, and they see themselves as more mature, capable, and
attractive than previously
• But, individual differences in self-esteem also become increasingly stable in adolescence
• Positive relationships among self-esteem, valuing of various activities, and success at those
activities strengthen
• Ex. Academic self-esteem is a powerful predictor of teenagers’ judgments of the importance and
usefulness of school subjects, willingness to exert effort, achievement, and eventual career choice
• Across SES and ethnic groups, individuals with mostly favorable self-esteem profiles tend to be
well adjusted, sociable, and conscientious
• Low self-esteem in all areas is linked to adjustment difficulties
• Authoritative parenting and encouragement from teachers predict high self-esteem in
adolescence
• Adolescents whose parents are critical and insulting have unstable and generally low self-esteem

6. Paths to Identity
• Researchers evaluating progress in identity development have constructed 4 identity statuses on
the basis of 2 key criteria from Erikson’s theory: exploration and commitment
• Identity moratorium – exploration without having reached commitment
• Identity achievement – commitment to values, beliefs, and goals following a period of exploration
• Identity foreclosure – commitment in the absence of exploration
• Identity diffusion – an apathetic state characterized by lack of both exploration and commitment
• Some young people remain in one identity status, while others experience many status transitions
• Most young people move from “lower” statuses (foreclosure or diffusion) to “higher” ones
(moratorium or achievement)
• This occurs between mid-teens to mid-20s
• The pattern often varies across identity domains, such as sexual orientation, vocation, and
religious values

7. Paths to Identity
• Attending college promotes identity development by providing students
with expanded opportunities to explore career options and life styles
• After college, graduates often sample a broad range of life experiences
before choosing a life course
• Individuals who go to work immediately after high school settle on a self-
definition earlier than college-educated youths
• But, they are at risk for identity diffusion if they encounter difficulty
realizing their occupational goals because of lack of training or vocational
choices
• Adolescents of both sexes typically make progress on identity concerns
before experiencing genuine intimacy in relationships

8. Identity Status and Psychological Well-Being
• Identity achievement and moratorium are both psychologically
healthy routes to a mature self-definition
• Adolescents in moratorium resemble identity-achieved individuals in
using an active, information-gathering cognitive style to make
personal decisions and solve problems (i.e. they seek out relevant
information, evaluate it carefully, and critically reflect on and revise
their views)
• Young people who are identity achieved or exploring have higher self-
esteem, feel more in control of their own lives, are more likely to view
school and work as feasible avenues for realizing aspirations, and are
more advanced in moral reasoning

9. Identity Status and Psychological Well-Being
• Adolescents stuck in either foreclosure or diffusion are passive in the face of identity concerns
and have adjustment difficulties
• Foreclosed individuals display a dogmatic, inflexible cognitive style, internalizing the values and
beliefs of parents and others without deliberate evaluation and they resist information that
threatens their position
• Most fear rejection by people on whom they depend for affection and self-esteem
• Long-term diffused individuals typically use a diffuse-avoidant cognitive style in which they avoid
dealing with personal decisions and problems and, instead, allow current situational pressures to
dictate their reactions
• Taking an “I don’t care” attitude, they entrust themselves to luck or fate and tend to go along with
the crowd
• As a result they experience time management and academic difficulties and, of all young people
are the most likely to use and abuse drugs
• Often their apathy leads to a sense of hopelessness about the future
• Least mature identity status

10. Factors Affecting Identity Development
• Adolescent identity formulation is the beginning of a life long, dynamic
process that is influenced by many factors related to either the individual
or the context
• Identity status is both a cause and a consequence of personality
• Adolescents who assume that absolute truth is always attainable tend to
be foreclosed
• Those who doubt that they will ever feel certain about anything are more
often identity-diffused
• Those who appreciate that they can use rational criteria to choose among
alternatives are likely to be in a state of moratorium or identity
achievement

11. Factors Affecting Identity Development
• Identity development is enhanced for teenagers whose families serve
as a “secure base” from which they can confidently move out into the
wider world
• Adolescents who feel attached to their parents but also feel free to
voice their own opinions tend to be in a state of moratorium or
identity achievement
• Foreclosed teenagers usually have close bonds with parents but lack
opportunities for healthy separation
• Diffused young people report the lowest levels of parental support
and of warm, open communication

12. Factors Affecting Identity Development
• Interaction with diverse peers encourages adolescents to explore values and possible
roles
• Schools and communities offering varied opportunities for exploration also support
identity development
• Supportive experiences include classrooms that promote high-level thinking, teachers
who encourage low-SES students to go to college, and vocational training that immerses
young people in the real world of adult work
• Culture strongly influences an aspect of mature identity not captured by the identity
status approach: constructing a sense of self-continuity despite major personal changes
• In a study of continuity of identity in Native-Canadian and cultural-majority year olds
• Most cultural-majority adolescents described an enduring personal essence, a core self
that remained the same despite change
• Native-Canadian youth took an interdependent approach, emphasizing a constantly
transforming self resulting from new roles and relationships

13. Factors Affecting Identity Development
• Societal forces are responsible for the special challenges faced by gay, lesbian, and
bisexual youths and by ethnic minority adolescents in forming a secure identity
• For minority adolescents, ethnic identity – a sense of ethnic-group membership and
attitudes and feelings associated with membership – is central to the quest for identity
• In many immigrant families, adolescents’ commitment to obeying their parents and
fulfilling family obligations lessens the longer the family has been in the immigrant-
receiving country
• This can induce acculturative stress – distress resulting from conflict between the
minority and the host culture
• Adolescents whose families have taught them the history, traditions, values, and
language of their ethnic group and who frequently interact with same-ethnicity peers are
more likely to forge a favorable ethnic identity, which is associated with higher self-
esteem
• Forming a bicultural identity – by exploring and adopting values from both the
adolescent’s subculture and the dominant culture, is very beneficial

14. Moral Development
• Cognitive development and expanding social experiences permit
adolescents to better understand larger social structures
• Societal institutions and law-making systems that govern moral
responsibilities
• As their grasp of social arrangements expands, adolescents construct
new ideas about what should be done when the needs and desires of
people conflict
• As a result, they move toward increasingly just, fair, and balanced
solutions to moral problems

15. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
• Piaget’s work on the moral judgment of children inspired Lawrence Kohlberg’s
more comprehensive cognitive-developmental theory of moral understanding
• Using a clinical interviewing procedure, Kohlberg presented a sample of year old
boys with hypothetical moral dilemmas – stories presenting a conflict between
two moral values
• For each dilemma, Kohlberg asked participants what the main actor should do
and why, then followed them longitudinally, reinterviewing them at intervals over
the next 20 years
• The well-known “Heinz dilemma” pits the value of obeying the law (e.g., not
stealing) against the value of human life (e.g., saving a dying person)
• Kohlberg emphasized that moral maturity depends on the way an individual
reasons about the dilemma, NOT on the content of the response (e.g., whether
or not to steal)

16. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
• The “Heinz dilemma”
• In Europe a woman was near death from cancer. There was one drug
the doctors thought might save her. A druggist in the same town had
discovered it, but he was charging ten times what the drug cost him
to make. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he
knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together half of
what it cost. The druggist refused to sell the drug for less or let Heinz
pay later. So Heinz became desperate and broke into the man’s store
to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have done that? Why or
why not?

17. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Understanding
• Kohlberg organized moral development into 3 levels, each with 2
stages
• Kohlberg believed that moral understanding is promoted by:
• Actively grappling with moral issues and noticing weaknesses in one’s
current reasoning
• Gains in perspective taking, which permit individuals to resolve moral
conflicts in more effective ways

18. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Understanding
• The preconventional level – morality is externally controlled; children accept the rules of
authority figures and judge actions by their consequences
• Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation: Children at this stage focus on fear of
authority and avoidance of punishment as reasons for behaving morally
• Prostealing: “if you let your wife die, you will be blamed for not spending the money to help her
and there’ll be an investigation of you and the druggist for your wife’s death”
• Antistealing: “you shouldn’t steal the drug because you’ll be caught and sent to jail if you do. If
you do get away, [you’d be scared that] the police would catch up with you at any minute.”
• Stage 2: The instrumental purpose orientation: Children view right action as flowing from self-
interest and understand reciprocity as equal exchange of favors
• Prostealing: “If Heinz decides to risk jail to save his wife, it’s his life he’s risking; he can do what he
wants with it. And the same goes for the druggist; it’s up to him to decide what he wants to do.”
• Antistealing: “Heinz is running more risk than it’s worth [to save a wife who is near death]”

19. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Understanding
• The conventional level – individuals regard conformity to social rules as important because they believe that
actively maintaining the current social system ensures positive relationships and societal order
• Stage 3: The “good boy-good girl” orientation, or the morality of interpersonal cooperation: The individual
obeys rules in order to promote societal harmony, based on an understanding of ideal reciprocity and on the
capacity to view a 2-person relationship from the vantage point of an impartial, outside observer
• Prostealing: “no one will think you’re bad if you steal the drug, but your family will think you’re an inhuman
husband if you don’t. If you let your wife die, you’ll never be able to look anyone in the face again.”
• Antistealing: “It isn’t just the druggist who will think you’re a criminal, everyone else will too. You’ll feel bad
thinking how you’ve brought dishonor on your family and yourself.”
• Stage 4: The social-order-maintaining orientation: The individual takes societal laws into account and
believes that rules must be enforced evenhandedly, and members of society must uphold rules to maintain
societal order
• Prostealing: “Heinz has a duty to protect his wife’s life; it’s a vow he took in marriage. But it’s wrong to steal,
so he would have to take the drug with the idea of paying the druggist for it and accepting the penalty for
breaking the law later.”
• Antistealing: “Even if his wife is dying, it’s still Heinz’s duty as a citizen to obey the law. If everyone starts
breaking the law in a jam, there’d be no civilization, just crime and violence.”

20. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Understanding
• The postconventional or principled level – define morality in terms of abstract principles and
values that apply to all situations and societies
• Stage 5: The social contract orientation: Individuals view laws and rules as flexible instruments for
furthering human purposes and will freely follow them when they are consistent with individual
rights and the interests of the majority
• Prostealing: “Although there is a law against stealing, the law wasn’t meant to violate a person’s
right to life. If Heinz is prosecuted for stealing, the law needs to be reinterpreted to take into
account situations in which it goes against people’s natural right to keep on living.”
• Stage 6: The universal ethical principle orientation: At this highest stage, right action is defined by
self-chosen ethical principles of conscience that are valid for all people, regardless of law and
social agreement
• Prostealing: “It doesn’t make sense to put respect for property above respect for life itself.
[People] could live together without private property at all. Respect for human life and
personality is absolute and accordingly [people] have a mutual duty to save one another from
dying.”

21. Research on Kohlberg’s Stage Sequence
• Kohlberg’s original research and other longitudinal studies provide the most convincing
evidence for his stage sequence
• With few exceptions, individuals move through the first 4 stages in the predicted order,
at a slow and gradual pace
• Reasoning at Stages 1 and 2 decreases in early adolescence
• Stage 3 increases through midadolescence and then declines
• Stage 4 reasoning rises over the teenage years and, by early adulthood, is the typical
response
• Very few people move beyond stage 4 to the postconventional stages
• In fact, postconventional morality is so rare that no clear evidence exists that Kohlberg’s
stage 6 actually follows stage 5
• This is a key challenge to Kohlberg’s theory: if people must reach stages 5 and 6 to be
considered truly morally mature, few individuals anywhere would be considered truly
moral

22. Research on Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral
Understanding
• A newer view of Kohlberg’s stages views moral maturity as a revision of stages 3 and 4
• These stages are not “conventional,” based on social conformity as Kohlberg assumed
• Rather, they require profound moral constructions, an understanding of ideal reciprocity as the
basis for relationships (stage 3) and for widely accepted moral standards, set forth in rules and
laws (stage 4)
• In this view, “postconventional” morality is a highly reflective endeavor limited to few individuals
• Real-life conflicts often elicit moral reasoning below a person’s actual capacity because they
involve practical considerations and mix cognition with intense emotion
• Kohlberg’s moral dilemmas do not evoke the emotional aspect involved in real-life conflicts, thus
allowing individuals to use their upper limits of moral thought because they allow reflection
without the interference of personal risk
• Like Piaget’s cognitive stages, Kohlberg’s moral stages do not develop in a neat stepwise fashion,
rather they are loosely organized and overlapping
• Because of the influence of situational factors on moral judgments, people draw on a range of
moral responses that vary with context

23. Are There Sex Differences in Moral
Reasoning?
• Carol Gilligan and others have argued that Kohlberg’s theory, formulated on the basis of
interviews with males, does not adequately represent the morality of girls and women
• Gilligan believes that feminine morality emphasizes an “ethic of care” that Kohlberg’s system
devalues
• According to Gilligan, a concern for others is a different but no less valid basis for moral judgment
than a focus on impersonal rights
• Many studies have tested Gilligan’s claim that Kohlberg’s approach underestimates the moral
maturity of females, and most do not support it.
• On hypothetical dilemmas as well as everyday moral problems, adolescent and adult females
display reasoning at the same stage as their male agemates and often at a higher stage
• These findings suggest that although Kohlberg emphasized justice rather than caring as the
highest moral ideal, his theory taps both sets of values
• Still, Gilligan does make a powerful claim that research on moral development has been limited
by too much attention to rights and justice (a “masculine” ideal) and too little to care and
responsiveness (a “feminine” ideal)

24. Coordinating Moral, Social-Conventional, and
Personal Concerns
• As adolescents enlarge the range of issues they regard as personal, they think more
intently about conflicts between personal choice and community obligation
• Like whether, and under what conditions, it is permissible for laws to restrict speech,
religion, marriage, childbearing, group membership, and other individual rights
• Ex. A government should not restrict the right to an individual’s religious views, but what
about when religious views say that women should not be allowed an education and that
anyone who denounces a religion should be put to death?
• Teenagers display more subtle thinking than school-age children on issues
• When asked if it is OK to exclude a child from a peer group on the basis of race or gender,
4th graders usually say exclusion is always unfair
• But, by 10th grade, young people, though increasingly mindful of fairness, indicate that
under certain conditions exclusion is OK
• Ex. A 10th grade girl justifies her opinion that members of an all-boys music club should
not have to allow a girl to join “It’s not nice, but it’s their club.”

25. Coordinating Moral, Social-Conventional, and
Personal Concerns
• As adolescents integrate personal rights with ideal reciprocity, they demand that protections they
want for themselves extend to others
• With age, adolescents are more likely to defend the government’s right to limit the personal right
to engage in risky health behaviors, such as smoking and drinking, in the interest of the larger
public group
• Ex. It endangers everyone when a person chooses to drink and drive
• Similarly, teenagers are increasingly mindful of the overlap between moral imperatives and social
conventions
• Eventually they realize that violating strongly held conventions can harm others, either by
inducing distress or by undermining fair treatment
• Ex. Like wearing a T-shirt to a wedding or talking out of turn at a student council meeting
• Over time, as their grasp of fairness deepens, young people realize that many social conventions
have moral implications
• They are vital for maintaining a just and peaceful society
• Which is a central aspect of Kohlberg’s stage 4

26. Influences on Moral Reasoning
• Moral understanding is influenced by various factors, including child-
rearing practices, schooling, peer interaction, and culture
• Evidence suggests that, as Kohlberg believed, these experiences
present young people with cognitive challenges
• Which stimulate them to think about moral problems in more
complex ways

27. Influences on Moral Reasoning: Parenting
Practices
• As in childhood, parenting practices associated with moral maturity in
adolescence combine warmth, exchange of ideas, and appropriate demands for
maturity
• Adolescents who are most advanced in moral understanding have parents who
engage in moral discussions, encourage prosocial behavior, and create a
supportive atmosphere by listening sensitively, asking questions, and presenting
higher-level reasoning (AKA authoritative parenting…)
• In one study, 11 year olds were asked what they though an adult would say to
justify a moral rule, such as not lying, stealing, or breaking a promise
• Those with warm, reasonably demanding, communicative parents were more
likely than their agemates to point to the importance of ideal reciprocity: “You
wouldn’t like it if I did it to you.”
• In contrast, when parents lecture, use threats, or make sarcastic remarks,
adolescents show little or no change in moral reasoning over time

28. Influences on Moral Reasoning: Schooling
• Years of schooling is a powerful predictor of movement to Kohlberg’s
stage 4 or higher
• Higher education introduces young people to social issues that range
beyond personal relationships to entire political or cultural groups
• College students who report more perspective-taking opportunities
(ex. Classes that emphasize open discussion of opinions and
friendships with others of different cultural backgrounds) and who
indicate they have become more aware of social diversity tend to be
advanced in moral reasoning

29. Influences on Moral Reasoning: Peer
Interaction
• Interaction among peers who present differing viewpoints promotes moral
understanding
• Through negotiating and compromising with agemates, young people
realize that social life can be based on cooperation between equals rather
than authority relations
• Interventions for improving moral understanding include discussions and
role playing of moral problems
• For interventions to be effective, young people must be highly engaged
• Confronting, critiquing, and attempting to clarify one another’s viewpoints
• And because moral development occurs gradually, many peer interaction
sessions over weeks or months typically are needed to produce moral
change

30. Influences on Moral Reasoning: Culture
• Individuals in industrialized nations move through Kohlberg’s stages more quickly and advance to
a higher level than individuals in village societies, who rarely move beyond stage 3
• One explanation is that in village societies, moral cooperation is based on direct relations
between people and does not allow for the development of advanced moral understanding
• Which depends on appreciating the role of larger social structures, such as laws and government
• Another possible reason is that responses to moral dilemmas in collectivist cultures are often
more other-directed than in Western Europe and North America
• In both village and collectivistic industrialized cultures that highly value interdependency,
statements portraying the individual as vitally connected to the social group are common
• These findings raise the question of whether Kohlberg’s highest level represents a culturally
specific way of thinking: limited to Western societies that emphasize individualism
• At the same time, a review of over 100 studies confirmed an age-related trend consistent with
Kohlberg’s stages 1-4 across diverse societies
• A common justice morality is clearly evident in the dilemma responses of people from vastly
different cultures

31. Moral Reasoning and Behavior
• A central assumption of the cognitive-developmental perspective is that moral
understanding should affect moral action
• According to Kohlberg, mature moral thinkers realized that behaving according to
their beliefs is vital for creating and maintaining a just social world
• Consistent with this idea, higher-stage adolescents more often act prosocially and
less often engage in cheating and other antisocial behaviors
• Yet the connection between advanced moral reasoning and action is only modest
• Moral behavior is influenced by many factors besides cognition
• Including emotions (empathy, sympathy, guilt), individual temperament, and a
long history of experiences that affect moral decision making
• Morality is also affected by moral self-relevance – the degree to which morality is
central to self-concept

32. Moral Reasoning and Behavior
• Research has yet to identify the origins of a sense of moral self-relevance, or how
thought combines with other influences to foster moral commitment
• Close relationships with parents, teachers, and friends may play a vital role
• Modeling prosocial behavior and fostering morally relevant emotions of empathy and
guilt, which combine with moral cognition to powerfully motivate moral action
• Another possibility is that just (fair) educational environments – in which teachers guide
students in democratic decision making and rule setting, resolving disputes civically, and
taking responsibility for others’ welfare – are influential
• Such environments may be particularly important for low-SES ethnic minority students
• Encouraging civic responsibility in young people can help them see the connection
between their personal interests and the public interest
• An insight that may foster all aspects of morality

33. Religious Involvement and Moral
Development
• Religion plays an important role in resolving real-life moral dilemmas for many
people
• Nearly 2/3 of Americans report being religious
• Formal religious involvement declines in adolescence
• But teenagers who remain part of a religious community are advantaged over
nonaffiliated youths in moral values and behavior
• Factors contributing to these favorable outcomes:
• In one study, religiously involved young people were more likely to report trusting
relationships with parents, other adults, and friends who held similar world views
• Religious education and youth activities teach concern for others and provide
opportunities for moral discussions and civic engagement
• Regardless of formal affiliation and domination, religious institutions may be
uniquely suited to foster moral and prosocial commitments

34. Further Challenges to Kohlberg’s Theory
• The most radical opposition comes from researchers who – referring to a
wide variability in moral reasoning across situations – claim that Kohlberg’s
stage sequence inadequately accounts for morality in everyday life
• They favor a pragmatic approach to morality
• They assert that each person makes moral judgments at varying levels of
maturity, depending on the individual’s context and motivations
• Conflict over a business deal is likely to evoke stage 2 reasoning
(instrumental purpose)
• A friendship or romantic dispute stage 3 reasoning (ideal reciprocity)
• A breach of contract stage 4 reasoning (social-order-maintaining)
• Supporters of the cognitive-developmental perspective point out that
people frequently rise above self-interest to defend others’ rights

35. Gender Typing
• Early adolescence is a period of gender intensification – increased gender
stereotyping of attitudes and behavior, and movement toward a more traditional
gender identity
• Biological, social, and cognitive factors all play a role in gender intensification
• Puberty magnifies sex differences in appearance, so teenagers spend more time
thinking about themselves in gender-linked ways
• Pubertal changes also prompt gender-typed pressures from others
• Parents, especially those with traditional gender-role beliefs, may encourage
“gender-appropriate” activities and behavior more than they did earlier
• And when adolescents start to date, they often become more gender-typed as a
way of increasing their attractiveness
• Cognitive changes, in particular greater concern with what others think, make
young teenagers more responsive to gender-role expectations

36. Gender Typing
• Gender intensification declines by middle to late adolescence, but not
all young people move beyond it to the same degree
• Teenagers who are encouraged to explore non-gender-typed options
and to question the value of gender stereotypes for themselves and
society are more likely to build an androgynous gender identity
• Overall, androgynous adolescents, especially girls, tend to be
psychologically healthier
• More self-confident, more willing to speak their own mind, better
liked by peers, and identity-achieved

37. The Family
• Development in adolescence involves striving for autonomy – a sense
of oneself as a separate, self-governing individual
• Teenagers strive to rely more on themselves and less on parents for
decision making
• Nevertheless, parent-child relationships remain vital for helping
adolescents become autonomous

38. Parent-Child Relationships
• Adolescent autonomy is supported by a variety of changes within the adolescent
• Puberty triggers psychological distancing from parents
• As young people look more mature, parents give them more independence and
responsibility
• Cognitive development paves the way for autonomy: Gradually, adolescents solve
problems and make decisions more effectively
• Improved ability to reason about social relationships leads teenagers to
deidealize their parents, viewing them as “just people”, so they may question
parental authority
• But teenagers still need guidance and sometimes protection from dangerous
situations
• Autonomy is fostered by warm, supportive, parent-adolescent ties that permit
young people to explore ideas and social roles

39. Parent-Child Relationships
• The rapid physical and psychological changes of adolescence trigger conflicting expectations in
parent-child relationships
• A major reason is that many parents find rearing teenagers to be stressful
• Interest in making choices about personal matters strengthens in adolescence
• But parents and teenagers (especially young teenagers) differ sharply on the appropriate age for
granting certain privileges
• Ex. control over clothing, going out with friends, and dating
• Parents’ own development can also lead to friction with teenagers
• Middle-aged parents must accept that their own possibilities are narrowing while their children’s
are expanding
• Teenagers may fail to appreciate that parents value spending time together as a family because
and important period of their adult lives, child-rearing, is coming to an end
• In other words, they don’t understand why their parents want to spend time together as a family
because their parents know that they are almost at the end of their child-rearing days

40. Parent-Child Relationships
• Immigrant parents from cultures that highly value family closeness and obedience to authority have greater
difficulty adapting to their teenagers’ push for autonomy, often reacting more strongly to adolescent
disagreement
• As adolescents acquire the host culture’s language and are increasingly exposed to its individualistic values,
immigrant parents may become even more critical, causing teenagers to rely less on the family network for
social support
• The acculturative stress adolescents may experience is associated with a rise in deviant behavior, including
alcohol use and delinquency
• Throughout adolescence, the quality of parent-child relationship is the single most consistent predictor of
mental health
• By middle to late adolescence, most parents and children achieve a mature, mutual relationship, and
harmonious interaction rises
• The reduced time that Western teenagers spend with their families has little to do with conflict
• It is due to the large amount of unstructured time available to teenagers in North America and Western
Europe because they have fewer obligations to overall family welfare
• And they tend to fill this time with activities away from home, including part-time jobs

41. Family Circumstances
• Parents who are financially secure and content with their marriages
usually find it easier to grant teenagers appropriate autonomy and
experience less conflict with them
• Teenagers who develop well despite family stresses benefit from the
same factors that fostered resilience in earlier years
• An appealing, easygoing disposition
• A parent who combines warmth with high expectations
• Strong bonds with prosocial adults outside the family, especially if
parental supports are lacking

42. Siblings Sibling interactions adapt to
development in adolescence
• Often becoming less intense in both positive and negative feelings
• Nonetheless, siblings who establish a positive bond in early childhood
continue to express affection and caring
• Mild sibling difference in perceived parental affection no longer
triggers jealousy
• Instead, they predict increasing sibling warmth
• Perhaps because adolescents now interpret a unique parental
relationship as a sign of their own individuality

43. Peer Relations
• As adolescents spend less time with family members, peers become increasingly
important
• In industrialized nations, young people spend most of each weekday with agemates in
school
• Teenagers also spend much out-of-class time together, more in some cultures than
others
• U.S. young people have about 50 hours of free time per week
• Europeans have about 45 hours
• East Asians have about 33 hours
• A shorter school year and less demanding academic standards, which lead American
youths to devote much less time to school work, account for these differences
• Adolescent peer relations can be both positive and negative
• At their best, peers serve as critical bridges between the family and adult social roles

44. Friendships: Characteristics
• Number of “best friends” declines from about 4-6 in early adolescence to 1-2 in adulthood
• At the same time, the nature of the relationship changes
• Adolescents seek intimacy (psychological closeness), mutual understanding of each other’s
values, beliefs, and feelings, and loyalty (sticking up for each other and not leaving them for
someone else) from their friends
• Self-disclosure (sharing of private thoughts and feelings) between friends rises steadily over the
adolescent years
• As a result, teenage friends get to know each other better as personalities
• Adolescent friends tend to be alike in identity status, educational aspirations, political beliefs, and
willingness to try drugs and engage in lawbreaking acts
• Over time, they become more similar in these ways
• Cooperation and mutual affirmation between friends rise in adolescence
• Adolescents are less possessive of their friends than in childhood
• Because they desire some autonomy for themselves and recognize that friends need this too

45. Friendships: Sex Differences
• Emotional closeness is more common between girls, who engage in more self-disclosure than boys
• Girls often get together to “just talk”
• Boys more often gather for an activity (sports or competitive games) and their discussions more often focus
on accomplishments and involve more competition and conflict
• In line with gender-role expectations, girls’ friendships typically focus on communal concerns, boys’ on
achievement and status
• The quality of boys’ friendships is more variable than girls’
• Gender identity plays a role: Androgynous boys are as likely as girls to form intimate same-sex ties, but
highly “masculine” boys are less likely to do so
• Closeness in friendship can have negative effects
• Adolescent friends sometimes coruminate, or repeatedly mull over problems and negative feelings, which
triggers anxiety and depression, more often in girls than in boys
• When conflicts arise between intimate friends, more potential exists for one party to harm the other
through relational aggression
• Ex. Divulging sensitive personal information to outsiders
• For this reason, girls’ closest same-sex friendships tend to be of shorter duration than boys’

46. Friendships on the Internet
• Use of the Internet to communicate, especially through instant
messaging, seems to support friendship closeness in adolescence
• Adolescents also use the Internet to meet new people
• Through online ties, they explore central adolescent issues, such as
sexuality and challenges in parent and peer relationships
• The context of the Internet may feel less threatening than those of
similar everyday conversations
• Online communication also poses dangers
• Exposure to degrading racial and ethnic slurs, sexually obscene
remarks, and potentially harmful social experiences

47. Friendships and Adjustment
• As long as adolescent friendships are not characterized by jealousy,
relational aggression, or attraction to antisocial behavior, they are
related to many aspects of psychological health and competence into
early adulthood
• Close friendships:
• Provide opportunities to explore the self and develop a deep
understanding of another
• Provide a foundation for future intimate relationships
• Help young people deal with stresses of adolescence
• Can improve attitudes toward and involvement in school

48. Cliques and Crowds
• In early adolescence, tightly knit peer groups tend to form, which are organized into cliques – groups of 5-7
members who are friends and usually resemble one another in family background, attitudes, and values
• At first, cliques are limited to same-sex members
• For girls, but not boys, clique membership predicts academic and social competence
• Clique membership is more important to girls, who use it as a context for expressing emotional closeness
• Mixed-sex cliques are common by mid-adolescence
• Often several cliques with similar values form a larger, more loosely organized group called a crowd
• Membership in a crowd is based on reputation and stereotype
• Which gives the adolescent an identity within the larger social structure of the school
• Typical high school crowds include “brains” (nonathletes who enjoy academics), “jocks” (who are very
involved in sports), “populars” (class leaders who are highly social and involved in activities), “partiers” (who
value socializing but care little about school work), “nonconformists” (who like unconventional clothing and
music), and “burnouts” (who cut school and get into trouble)
• Crowd affiliations are linked to strengths in adolescents’ self-concepts, which reflect their interests, abilities,
and family factors

49. Cliques and Crowds
• Belonging to a clique or crowd can modify adolescents’ beliefs and
behavior, but family experiences affect the extent to which
adolescents become like their peers
• In a study of 8,000 9th-12th graders
• Adolescents who described their parents as authoritative were
members of “brain,” “jock,” and “popular” groups that accepted both
adult and peer reward systems
• Adolescent boys with permissive parents aligned themselves with the
“partiers” and “burnouts,” suggesting lack of identification with adult
reward system

50. Cliques and Crowds
• As interest in dating increases, boys’ and girls’ cliques come together into mixed-
sex cliques
• Which provide models for how to interact with the other sex and a chance to do
so without having to be intimate
• By late adolescence, as boys and girls become comfortable approaching each
other directly, the mixed-sex clique disappears
• Crowds decline in importance as adolescents settle on personal values and goals
• They no longer feel a need to broadcast, through dress, language, and activities,
who they are
• From 10th to 12th grade, about ½ of young people switch crowds, mostly in
favorable directions
• “Brains” and “normal” crowds grow and deviant crowds lose members as
teenagers focus more on their future

51. Dating
• With the hormonal changes of puberty, sexual interest increases, but cultural expectations determine when
and how dating begins
• Asian youths start dating later and have fewer dating partners than young people in Western societies,
which encourage romantic involvements between teenagers from middle school on
• At age 12-14, these relationships last only briefly, but by age 16 they continue on average for nearly 2 years
• Young adolescents tend to mention recreation and achieving peer status as reasons for dating
• By late adolescence, young people are ready for greater psychological intimacy and look for someone who
offers companionship, affection, and social support
• The achievement of intimacy between dating partners typically lags behind that of friends
• Recall that according to ecological theory, early attachment bonds lead to an internal working model, or set
of expectations about attachment figures, that guides later close relationships
• Consistent with this idea, secure attachment to parents in infancy and childhood, together with recollections
of that security in adolescence, predicts quality of teenagers’ friendship and romantic ties
• Perhaps because early adolescent dating relationships are shallow and stereotyped, early dating is related to
drug use, delinquency, and poor academic achievement

52. Dating
• Gay and lesbian youths face special challenges in initiating and maintaining visible romances
• Their first dating relationships seem to be short-lived and involve little emotional commitment,
because they fear peer harassment and rejection
• Because of intense prejudice, homosexual adolescents often retreat into heterosexual dating
• Many have difficulty finding a same-sex partner because their homosexual peers have not yet
come out
• Overall, as long as it does not begin too early, dating provides lessons in cooperation, etiquette,
and dealing with people in a wider range of situations
• Among older teenagers, close romantic ties promote sensitivity, empathy, self-esteem, social
support, and identity development
• Still, about half of first romances do not survive high school graduation
• Those that do usually become unsatisfying because young people are still forming their identities
and after high school often find they have little in common

53. Peer Conformity
• Conformity to peer pressure is greater during adolescence than in childhood and early adulthood
• In a study of American youths, adolescents felt greatest pressure to conform to the most obvious aspects of
the peer culture
• Dress, grooming, and participation is social activities
• Peer pressure to engage in proadult behavior, such as cooperating with parents and getting good grades was
also strong
• Research conducted in Singapore had similar outcomes, except that peer pressure to meet family and school
obligations exceeded pressure to join in aspects of peer-culture
• Early adolescents are more likely than younger or older individuals to give in to peer pressure on day-to-day
personal choices
• But, parents have more impact on basic life values and educational plans
• Authoritative child rearing is related to resistance to peer pressure
• When parents are supportive and exert appropriate oversight, teenagers respect them and usually follow
their rules and consider their advice
• Adolescents whose parents exert either too much or too little control tend to be highly peer-oriented
• They more often rely on friends for advice about their personal lives and future and are more willing to
break their parents’ rules, ignore schoolwork, and engage in other problem behavior

54. Problems of Development
• Most young people move through adolescence with little disturbance
• But, some encounter major disruptions in development
• Such as early parenthood, substance abuse, and school failure
• In each instance, biological and psychological changes, families,
schools, peers, communities, and culture combine to yield particular
outcomes
• Serious difficulties rarely occur in isolation
• They are usually interrelated as is apparent in 3 additional problems
of the teenage years: depression, suicide, and delinquency

55. Depression
• Depression – feeling sad, frustrated, and hopeless about life, accompanied by loss of
pleasure in most activities and disturbances in sleep, appetite, concentration, and energy
– is the most common psychological problem of adolescence
• If allowed to continue, it seriously impairs social, academic, and vocational functioning
• About 15-20% percent of teenagers have had one or more major depressive episodes
• From 2-8% are chronically depressed
• Depression increases sharply from ages in industrialized nations
• Teenage girls are twice as likely as boys to report persistent depressed mood
• This difference in rates of depression in males and females is sustained throughout the
lifespan
• Many adults minimize the seriousness of adolescent depression, misinterpreting it as a
passing phase

56. Factors Related to Depression
• Genes can induce depression by affecting:
• The balance of neurotransmitters in the brain
• The development of brain regions involved in inhibiting negative emotion
• The body’s hormonal response to stress
• Experience can also activate depression, promoting any of these biological changes
• A high incidence of depression and other psychological disorders is seen in parents of
depressed children and adolescents
• This may reflect a genetic risk that is passed from parent to child
• It may also result from maladaptive parenting by the depressed parent
• Depressed youths usually display a learned-helplessness attributional style
• In a vulnerable young person, depression can be sparked by an event, such as failing at
something important, parental divorce, or the end of a close friendship or romantic
partnership

57. Sex Difference in Depression
• In industrialized nations, girls are more prone to depression than boys
• In developing countries, rates of depression are similar for males and females and occasionally
higher in males
• Because the difference in rates of depression in males and females is limited to industrialized
nations, it cannot be due to the biological changes of puberty
• Factors responsible for these gender differences include stressful life events and gender-typed
coping styles
• Early maturing girls are especially prone to depression
• Gender intensification in early adolescence often strengthens girls’ passivity, tendency to
ruminate on problems, and dependency, which is maladaptive
• Girls who repeatedly feel overwhelmed develop an overly reactive physiological stress response
and cope more poorly with challenges
• Stressful experiences and stress reactivity feed on one another, sustaining depression
• Profound depression can lead to suicidal thoughts which all too often are translated into action

58. Suicide
• Suicide rate increases over the lifespan, but it jumps sharply at adolescence
• Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among American youths
• The adolescent suicide rate tripled between the mid-1960s and the mid-
1990s, followed by a slight decline
• Since 2000 the rate has been steadily increasing
• Rates of adolescent suicide vary widely among industrialized nations
• Low rates in Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain
• Intermediate in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States
• High in Finland, New Zealand, and Singapore
• These international differences remain unexplained

59. Factors Related to Adolescent Suicide
• Despite girls’ higher rates of depression, 3-4 times as many boys as girls kill themselves
• Girls make more unsuccessful suicide attempts and use methods from which they are more likely
to be revived, such as a sleeping pill overdose
• Boys tend to choose techniques that lead to instant death, such as firearms or hanging
• Gender-role expectations may also contribute: less tolerance exists for feelings of helplessness
and failed efforts in males than in females
• African Americans and Hispanics have lower suicide rates than Caucasian Americans
• However, the suicide rate among African American adolescent males has risen recently
• Native American youths commit suicide 2-6 times the national averages
• Probably influenced by high rates of profound family poverty, school failure, and alcohol and drug
use
• Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youths attempt suicide 3 times as often as other adolescents
• Largely as a result of more family conflict, inner turmoil about their sexuality, and peer
victimization

60. Factors Related to Adolescent Suicide
• Suicide tends to occur in 2 types of young people
• Those who are highly intelligent, but solitary, withdrawn, and unable to meet
their own high standards
• Those who show antisocial tendencies and express their unhappiness through
bullying, fighting, stealing, drug abuse, and increased risk taking
• Suicidal teenagers often have family backgrounds that include emotional and
antisocial disorders, as well as a history of stressful life events
• Cognitive changes, such as being better at planning ahead, lead to an increase in
suicide in adolescence
• Although some act impulsively, many young people take purposeful steps toward
killing themselves
• Belief in the personal fable leads many depressed adolescents to conclude that
no one could possibly understand their pain

61. Warning Signs of Suicide
• Efforts to put personal affairs in order – smoothing over troubled relationships, giving away treasured
possessions
• Verbal cues – saying good bye to family members and friends, making direct or indirect references to suicide
(“I won’t have to worry about these problems much longer.”; “I wish I were dead.”)
• Feelings of sadness, despondency, “not caring” anymore
• Extreme fatigue, lack of energy, boredom
• No desire to socialize; withdrawal from friends
• Easily frustrated
• Emotional out-bursts – spells of crying or laughing, bursts of energy
• Inability to concentrate, distractible
• Decline in grades, absence from school, discipline problems
• Neglect of personal appearance
• Sleep change – loss of sleep or excessive sleepiness
• Appetite change – eating more or less than usual
• Physical complaints – stomachaches, backaches, headaches

62. Delinquency
• Juvenile delinquents are children or adolescents who engage in illegal acts
• Although U.S. crime has declined since the mid-1990s, year olds account for about 15% of police arrests
• Although they make up 8% of the population
• Almost all teenagers, when asked confidentially about lawbreaking, admit to having committed an offense of
some sort, usually a minor crime
• Such as petty stealing or disorderly conduct
• Delinquency rises over the early teenage years, remains high in middle adolescence, and then declines
• For most adolescents, a brush with the law does not forecast long-term antisocial behavior
• But, repeated arrests are cause for concern
• Teenagers are responsible for 18% of violent offenses in the U.S.
• A small percentage become recurrent offenders, who commit most of these crimes, and some enter a life of
crime
• Childhood onset of conduct problems are far more likely to persist than conduct problems that first appear
in adolescence

63. Factors Related to Delinquency
• In adolescence, the gender gap in aggression widens: Violent crime continues to be mostly the domain of
boys
• Girls only account for 1 in 5 adolescent arrests for violence and their offenses are largely limited to simple
assault (such as spitting or pushing)
• Although SES and ethnicity are strong predictors of arrests, they are only mildly related to teenagers’ self-
reports of antisocial acts
• Arrest rates reflect primarily the tendency to arrest, charge, and punish low SES ethnic minority youths more
often that their higher SES white and Asian counterparts
• Difficult temperament, low intelligence, peer rejection in childhood, and association with antisocial peers
are linked to delinquency
• Families of delinquent youths tend to be low in warmth, high in conflict, and characterized by harsh
inconsistent discipline and low monitoring
• Youth crime peaks on weekdays between 2:00-8:00pm when many teenagers are unsupervised
• When children who are extremely active and impulsive (which boys are more likely to be than girls)
experience incompetent parenting, aggression rises during childhood and leads to violent offenses in
adolescence

64. Factors Related to Delinquency
• Teenagers commit more crimes in poverty-stricken neighborhoods with
limited recreational and employment opportunities and high adult crime
• In such neighborhoods, adolescents have easy access to deviant peers,
drugs, and firearms and are likely to be recruited into antisocial gangs
• Gangs that commit the vast majority of violent delinquent acts
• Schools in the locales typically fail to meet students’ developmental needs
• Large classes, weak instruction, and lax enforcement of rules increase
teenagers’ inclination toward aggression and violence

65. Delinquency Prevention and Treatment
• Effective prevention of delinquency should start early and take place at
multiple levels to address factors that include family relationships,
parenting style, the quality of teaching in schools, and economic and social
conditions in communities
• Many U.S. school have implemented zero tolerance policies, which severely
punish all disruptive and threatening behavior, both major and minor,
usually with suspension or expulsion
• But, often they are implemented inconsistently: Low SES minority students
are 2-3 times more likely to be punished, especially for minor misbehaviors
• However, no evidence exists that this approach reduced youth aggression
and other forms of misconduct
• In fact, some studies find that by excluding students from school, zero
tolerance heightens high school dropout and antisocial behavior

66. Delinquency Prevention and Treatment
• Treating serious offenders requires an intensive, often lengthy
approach, also directed at the multiple determinants of delinquency
• Even these multidimensional treatments can fall short if young people
remain embedded in hostile home lives, antisocial peer groups, and
fragmented neighborhoods
• In a program called multisystemic therapy, therapists combined family
intervention with integrating violent youths into positive school,
work, and leisure activities and disengaging them from deviant peers
• Compared with conventional services or individual therapy, the
intervention led to greater improvement in parent-child relations and
a dramatic and sustained drop in number of arrests