Early Adulthood Flashcards
Early adulthood age and intro
◦ Leaving home
◦ Completing education
◦ Beginning full-time work
◦ Attaining economic independence
◦ Establishing a long-term intimate relationship
◦ Starting a family
Young adults are at their peak of physical abilities, with
any decline in physical abilities showing a very gradual
decline
Physical Functioning
- Growth in height and weight
◦ Secular trend
◦ Full height achieved by mid-20s
◦ Weight gain from more sedentary lifestyle - Strength
◦ Peaks in early-30s, then slow decline - Age-related changes
◦ Cardiovascular, respiratory, sensory
Health in early adulthood
- Pathological ageing
◦ caused by illness, abnormality, genetic factors,
exposure to unhealthy environments - Health compromising behaviours
◦ can lead to illness e.g. smoking - Important influence of an individual’s
Socioeconomic Status (SES)– pollution, toxic
communities, poverty - Diet – cardiovascular disease, cancer
- Exercise
Stress
Early adulthood brings new levels of stress
*Establishing career, starting family
*Level of stress is associated with a wide range of health
problems
*General adaptation syndrome
* Alarm
* Resistance
* Exhaustion
*Direct effect on health – unhealthy stress levels directly
affects the physiological system and can produce changes
that lead to illness
The experience of stress
Primary appraisal
* Present harm
* Future damage
* Challenge to overcome and benefit
Secondary appraisal
* Assessment of coping resources
* Stress reaction depends on controllability
and predictability of stimulus
Societal Stress
Post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD)
* Numbness, intrusive memories, problems with sleeping and concentrating, hyper-vigilance
* Long-lasting effects on health, relationships, economic stability
* Important to distinguish PTSD and Complex PTSD
Health Compromising
Behaviours
- Many young adults still engage in behaviours that put them at increased health risk:
◦ Smoking
◦ Alcohol consumption
◦ Unsafe sex
◦ Eating disorders
Health beliefs model
- Engagement in health-risk behaviours depends on:
◦ perceived susceptibility
◦ severity of outcome
◦ external or internal cues
◦ balance between benefits and barriers - People’s health behaviours often inconsistent
Theories of Adult Cognition
- Piaget’s formal operationsstage
- Final stage of cognitivedevelopment
- Focus on logical-mathematical thought
- Later researchers see limitations of Piaget’s stage
theory - Postformal thought
- Knowledge is relative, non-absolute
- Accept and synthesise contradictions
- Problem finding stage (Arnett, 2006)
Is there a fifth stage?
- Several theorists have proposed a fifth stage and beyond, emphasising pragmatic, relative and changing nature of adult knowledge
- Fifth-stage theorists recognise change and disequilibrium
- Arlin – problem finding; asking questions about oneself
- Basseches (1988) proposes dialectical thinking as the post-formal cognitive stage
- Labouvie-Vief’s Theory
oPragmatic thought – develop rational ways of thinking
oCognitive affective complexity - more adept at integrating cognition with emotional - organising the contradictions into a structure that recognises individual experiences. - Expertise - knowledge in one specific field – years of experience and learning; thinks at a deeper and more abstract level
- Always be open to new ways of thinking…
Development of contextual thinking
Schaie’s stages of adult thinking builds on Piaget – argues
that cognitive abilities become more goal-directed during
adulthood
◦ Acquisitive stage
◦ Achieving stage
◦ Responsible stage
◦ Executive stage
◦ Reintegrative stage
Contextual relativism
- Perry (1970)
◦ Move from basic dualism to multiplicity – contextual relativism
◦ Study not generalisable - Women’s knowledge
◦ Silent knowing
◦ Received knowing
◦ Subjective knowing
◦ Procedural knowing
◦ Constructed knowing
Adult moral reasoning
- Kohlberg’s stages
◦ No social or emotional context - Gilligan’s stages
◦ Survival orientation, conventional care, integrated care - Differences in moral reasoning arise from different
experiences rather than sex differences - Moral voice – includes class, context, and opportunity, not
just sex - Ethnicity and moral voice
Spirituality
- Faith or spirituality is another aspect of moral development
that depends on cognitive growth - As young adults develop their own ethical viewpoint, they
become capable of finding their own spiritual meaning or
faith - Fowler (1991) argued that the growth of faith is a universal
development that can occur within or outside a specifically
religious context
Social clock
- On time – following the social
timetable - Off time – out of phase with peers
Timing of events theories
- Describe and explain patterns of behaviour
- Explain diversity among groups
- Cultural and generational differences reflect different
expectations
Crisis theory: Erikson
- Crisis of intimacy versus isolation
◦ Need to establish close, committed relationships - For Erikson, the development of identity necessary for
the development of intimacy - Neurological and brain structural differences explain
differences in achievement of intimacy - For Erikson, the avoidance of intimacy leads to isolation
and self-absorption
Crisis theory: Vaillant
- Harvard ‘Grant study’
- Began in 1937, homogenous sample of 204 white males
attending Harvard University - Women not included in the study
- Three conclusions about adult development:
◦ Development is lifelong
◦ Sustained relationships shape lives
◦ Adaptive mechanisms determine mental health
Development of adaptive mechanisms
- Mature mechanisms
◦ Seen in generative men
◦ Healthy brain
◦ Sustained and loving relationships - Immature mechanisms
◦ Perpetual boys
◦ Generative men
◦ Problems with identity and intimacy - Psychotic mechanisms
- Neurotic mechanisms
Crisis theory: Levinson
- Study based on 40 males 35–45 years, four occupational
subgroups
◦ Blue collar workers, business executives, university biologists, novelists - Later included females
- Studied through the biographical model
◦ Interviews, individual observations, tests, follow up interviews after 2 years - Identified 3 eras or ‘seasons’ of male adult life
◦ the era of early adulthood (ages 17–45),
◦ the era of middle adulthood (ages 40–65),
◦ the era of late adulthood (ages 60 onwards). - Era of young adulthood (17–45 years), era of middle
adulthood (40–65 years), era of late adulthood (60 years+) - The overlap of ages between each era or season allows for
individual variability - Often a transition is preceded by some form of failure, such
as perceived failure to achieve a particular goal within the
expected time frame
Intimate relationships:
Friendships
- Friendship increases with age
◦ Urban tribe, social convoy
◦ Provides well-being, self-esteem
buffer against stress
◦ Encourages health-promoting and
prosocial behaviours - Online – social networks, dating sites
- Gender differences
◦ Friendship styles
Sternberg’s definitions of love
- Liking
- Infatuation
- Empty love
- Romantic love
- Companionate love
- Fatuous love
- Consummate love
Intimate Relationships
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love has particular relevance to this period of the lifespan. His theory consists of three building blocks
* Intimacy — the experience of warmth toward another person that arises from feelings of closeness and connectedness, and the desire to share one’s innermost thoughts
* Passion — intense romantic or sexual desire, accompanied by physiological arousal
* Commitment — desire to maintain the relationship through good times and bad
* In this theory, couples are well matched if they possess
corresponding levels of passion, intimacy, and commitment
Partner Selection
- Cultural and historical
- Some countries/cultures arranged marriages are still common
- Partners tend to be similar to each other
- Likely to meet within their social networks
- Contemporary adults marrying later or co-habitate
- Pattern of serial monagamy
- Increase in use of online dating services
-personal safety and authenticity a concern - Motivation for both online and offline partner seeking is to
form a committed relationship
Marriage, divorce and remarriage
- Marriage styles
- Equal-partner (or near-equal)
- Conventional
- Junior-partner
- Same-sex partnerships – more
likely to achieve equality
Divorce
- Australian divorce rate – 30%; NZ – 30%
- Factors influencing divorce
- Legislative changes
- Personality (happiness)
- Demographic variables
- Lack of consensus re: role-allocation
- Less expectation of life-long relationship
Remarriage
- More than half of divorced adults remarry
- Remarrying Australians
- 21% of bridegrooms; 20% of brides
- Remarrying New Zealanders
- 24% of bridegrooms; 23% of brides
- Remarriage quality relates to
- Background/contextual factors
- Couple interactional processes
- Attributes of the person
Other lifestyles
- Singlehood
◦ Ideological grounds for some - Cohabitation
◦ ‘spectacular demographic trend’ (Simons, 2006) - Lesbian/gay sexual preference
◦ More likely to establish equal partnerships - Intimate lasting partnerships do not necessarily depend on
marriage or sexual orientation
Parenthood
- Prenatal expectations generally matched post-
partum experiences - Gap between expectations and realities is often
considerable - Single parenthood -typically lower income, however
more single people are choosing to parent alone. - Remarriage often leads to the creation of step-parent
or blended families.
