Chapter 10 Flashcards
Identity versus role confusion
Identity
Erikson’s term for the fifth stage of development, in which the person tries to figure out “Who am I?” but is confused as to which of many possible roles to adopt
Identity
Consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of roles, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations
Identity achievement
Identity
Erikson’s term for the attainment of identity, or the point at which a person understands who he or she is as a unique individual, in accord with past experiences and future plans
Role confusion (identity diffusion) (Not Yet Achieved)
Situation in which an adolescent does not seem to know or care what his or her identity is
Foreclosure
Not Yet Achieved
Erikson’s term for premature identity formation, which occurs when an adolescent adopts parents’ or society’s roles and values wholesale, without questioning or analysis
Moratorium
Not Yet Achieved
An adolescent’s choice of a socially acceptable way to postpone making identity-achievement decisions (Going to college is a common example.)
Four Areas of Identity Formation
Erikson (1968/1994) highlighted four aspects of identity:
- Religious identity
- Political identity
- Vocational identity
- Sexual identity/gender identity/gender dysphoria
Adolescents
Human Relationships
- Seek to establish unique self
* Are social beings, dependent on others to validate whatever identity they seek
Conflicts with parents
Human Relationships: With Parents
Parent–adolescent conflict typically peaks in early adolescence and is more a sign of attachment than of distance
Bickering
Human Relationships: With Parents
Bickering involves petty, peevish arguing, usually repeated and ongoing
Neglect
Human Relationships: With Parents
Although teenagers may act as if they no longer need their parents, neglect can be very destructive.
Family closeness, five aspects:
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
More important than conflict may be family closeness, which has five aspects: • Communication • Support • Emotional dependency • Connectedness • Control
Communication
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
Do parents and teens talk openly with one another?
Support
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
Do they rely on one another?
Emotional dependency
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
• Adolescents are more dependent on their parents if they are female and/or from a minority ethnic group.
– This can be either repressive or healthy, depending on the culture and the specific circumstances.
Connectedness
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
How emotionally close are they?
Control
Human Relationships: Family Closeness
Do parents encourage or limit adolescent autonomy?
Parental monitoring
Do You Know Where Your Teenager Is?
Parents’ ongoing awareness of what their children are doing, where, and with whom
• Monitoring is a mutual process with adults who care and adolescents who communicate.
• Adolescents participate in their own monitoring.
Positive
Parental monitoring
Part of a warm, supportive relationship
Negative
Parental monitoring
When overly restrictive and controlling
Worst
Parental monitoring
Psychological when parents make a child feel guilty and
impose gratefulness by threatening to withdraw love and support
Peer pressure
Relationship with Peers
Provides encouragement to conform to one’s friends or contemporaries in behavior, dress, and attitude
• Is usually considered a negative force, as when adolescent peers encourage one another to defy adult authority
• Can also be positive influence of either gender
Peers
Relationship with Peers
Help adolescents navigate physical changes of puberty, intellectual challenges of high school, and social changes of leaving childhood
– Can be more helpful than harmful, especially in early adolescence
– Affect adolescents differentially
– Are particularly needed by adolescents of minority and immigrant groups
Deviancy training
Peer Support
Destructive peer support in which one person shows another how to rebel against authority or social norms
Selection
Relationship with Peers
Teenagers select friends whose values and interests they share, abandoning friends who follow other paths.
Facilitation
Relationship with Peers
• Peers facilitate both destructive and constructive behaviors in one another.
• Makes it easier to do both the wrong thing and the right
thing
• Helps individuals do things they would be unlikely to do on their own
Developmental Progression of Deviancy
- Problem behavior, school marginalization, and low academic performance at age 11
- Gang involvement two years later, deviancy training two years after that
- Violent behavior at age 18 or 19
First Love
First romance typically occurs in high school
– Girls more likely to seek and have steady relationships
– Exclusive commitment often difficult
– Closely related to emotional state
– Does not always include coitus; norms differ
Sexual orientation
Same-Sex Romances
- Person’s sexual and romantic attraction to others of the same sex, the other sex, or both sexes
- Fluid during teen years
- Culture and cohort are powerful influence.
- Acceptance
- Criminalization
Adolescents
Sex Education
Strong sexual urges but minimal logic about pregnancy and disease
Sources
Sex Education
• Media: Many adolescents learn about sex from the media
• Internet: The internet is the most common source for
education
• Music and magazines
Media consumption peaks at puberty
Learning from parents
Sex Education
- Parental communication influences adolescents’ behavior.
- Many parents know little about their adolescents’ sexual activity and wait to talk about sex until their child is already in a romantic relationship.
- Especially when parents are silent, forbidding, or vague, adolescent sexual behavior is strongly influenced by peers.
Timing and content of sex education vary by state and community.
(Sex Education)
- Some middle and high schools provide comprehensive education; others provide nothing.
- Some programs begin in sixth grade; others start at senior year.
Depression
Sadness and Anger
- Less confidence and more depression; gradual self-esteem increase
- Self-esteem dip at puberty found in every ethnicity and gender; but gender and ethnic differences
- Influenced by familism
Clinical depression
Sadness and Anger
• Feelings of hopelessness, lethargy, and worthlessness that last two weeks or more
• Combination of biological and psychosocial stresses
• Differential susceptibility
(5-HTTLPR)
Gender differences
Sadness and Anger
- Studies find that girls have much higher rates than boys, usually about twice as high.
- Cause for the gender disparity may be biological, psychological, or social.
Cognitive explanation: Rumination
Sadness and Anger
- Repeatedly thinking and talking about past experiences
- Can contribute to depression
- More common in girls
Suicidal ideation
Suicide
Thinking about suicide, usually with some serious emotional and intellectual or cognitive overtones
– Adolescent suicidal ideation is common; completed suicides are not.
– Adolescents are less likely to kill themselves than adults are
Gender differences in suicide
Suicide
Suicide rate among male teenagers in the U.S. is four times higher than the rate for female teenagers.
Reasons for gender differences
Suicide
- Availability of lethal means
* Male culture that shames those who attempt suicide but fail
Methods by gender
Suicide
- Males tend to shoot themselves; females swallow pills or hang themselves.
- Girls tend to let their friends and families know that they are depressed, but boys do not.
Juvenile delinquent (Delinquency and Defiance)
- Person under the age of 18 who breaks the law
- Moody adolescents could be both depressed and delinquent because externalizing and internalizing behavior are connected during these years.
Life-course-persistent offender
Delinquency and Defiance
A person whose criminal activity typically begins in early adolescence and continues throughout life; a career criminal
Adolescence-limited offender
Delinquency and Defiance
Person whose criminal activity stops by age 21
Stubbornness
Pathways to Delinquency
Can lead to defiance, which can lead to running away
Shoplifting
Pathways to Delinquency
Can lead to arson and burglary
Bullying
Pathways to Delinquency
Can lead to assault, rape, and murder
Age trends
Variations in Drug Use
- Drug use becomes widespread from age 10 to 25 and then decreases
- Drug use before age 15 is the best predictor of later drug use
- Three-fourths of U.S. high school seniors tried alcohol; half are current drinkers
Cohort differences?????????
Variations in Drug Use
Rates vary from state to state.
• Drug use among adolescents has decreased in the U.S. since 1976 (decrease in synthetic narcotics and prescription drugs, but increase in vaping).
• Adolescent culture may have a greater effect on drug-taking behavior than laws do.
• Most adolescents in the U.S. have experimented with drug use and say that they could find illegal drugs if they tried.
• Most U.S. adolescents are not regular drug users and about 25% never use any drugs.
Gender differences in drug use
Drug Use and Abuse
• Gender differences are reinforced by social constructions about proper male and female behavior.
• Males buy and use more drugs.
• In U.S.
– Males and females smoke almost equally.
– Girls drink alcohol at earlier age.
– Boys use more steroids and girls use more diet drugs.
Harm from Drugs
Many researchers find that drug use before maturity is particularly likely to harm body and brain growth.
• Few adolescents notice harm from drugs.
• Brain differences make addiction differences for each
adolescent.
– Genetic
– Contextual
– Age-related
Tobacco
Harm from Drugs
- Slows down growth (impairs digestion, nutrition, and appetite)
- Can damage developing hearts, lungs, brains, and reproductive systems
Alcohol
Harm from Drugs
- Most frequently abused drug among North American teenagers
- Heavy drinking may permanently impair memory and self-control by damaging the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
- Adolescents typically deny that they experience any harm or could ever become addicted.
Marijuana
Harm from Drugs
- Adolescents who regularly smoke marijuana are more likely to drop out of school, become teenage parents, and be unemployed.
- Marijuana affects memory, language proficiency, and motivation.
Generational forgetting
Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?
- The idea that each new generation forgets what the previous generation learned
- As used here, the term refers to knowledge about the harm drugs can do.
What works
Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?
- FL and CA ad campaigns appealing to young
- Graphic image ads
- Parental example and social changes
9th vs 12th graders: Percentage of virgins
70 vs 35-40
Parasuicide
Any potentially lethal action against the self that does not result in death
Cluster suicide
Several suicides committed by members of a group within a brief period of time
