1. Chapter 10: Young and Middle Adulthood
Becoming an Adult: Physical, Cognitive, and Personality Development

2. What role transitions mark entry into adulthood in Western societies
What role transitions mark entry into adulthood in Western societies? How do non- Western cultures mark the transitions to adulthood?
How does going to college fit in the transition to adulthood?
What psychological criteria mark the transition to adulthood?
What aspects of early young adulthood make it a separate developmental stage?
10.1 Emerging Adulthood

3. Period between late teens and mid-to late twenties when individuals are not adolescents but are not yet fully adults
Emerging Adulthood

4. Role Transitions Marking Adulthood
Role Transitions - the process of assuming new responsibilities and duties
E.g., (Western Culture) voting, completing education, full-time employment, establishing an independent household, getting marries, parenthood
Rites of Passage - rituals marking initiation into adulthood
E.g., tribal rituals
Role Transitions Marking Adulthood

5. Going to College 67% of all high-school graduates go to college
Promotes intellectual and personal growth
Returning Adult Students - college students over 25
Tend to be: problem solvers, self-directed, pragmatic
Integrate coursework with employment
Going to College

6. Psychological Views Establishing Intimacy
Intimacy versus Isolation - sixth stage in Erikson’s theory and the major psychosocial task for young adults
Stronger sense of identity correlated to higher levels of intimacy in young adults
Psychological Views

7. 10.2 Physical Development and Health
In what respects are young adults at their physical peak?
How healthy are young adults in general?
How do smoking, drinking alcohol, and nutrition affect young adults’ health?
How does the health of young adults differ as a function of socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity?
10.2 Physical Development and Health

8. Growth, Strength and Physical Functioning
Physical functioning generally peaks during young adulthood
Overall young adults are healthy
Fewer deaths from disease
Growth, Strength and Physical Functioning

9. Lifestyle Factors Smoking Drinking Alcohol
More than half of the cancers are related to smoking (American Cancer Society)
Risks with second-hand smoke
Drinking Alcohol
Binge drinking: type of drinking defined for men as consuming five or more drinks in a row and for women as consuming four or more drinks in a row within the past 2 weeks
Addiction: physical dependence on a substance such that withdrawal symptoms are experienced when deprived of that substance
Lifestyle Factors

10. Nutrition Metabolism: how much energy the body needs
Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs): chemicals that cause fatty deposits to accumulate in arteries, impeding blood flow
High-density lipoproteins (HDLs): chemicals that help keep arteries clear and break down LDLS
Body mass index (BMI): a ratio of body weight and height and is related to total body fat

11. Social, Gender, and Ethnic Issues in Health
Social Factors
Socioeconomic status - ability to acquire adequate health care
Education - association with higher income; higher awareness of dietary and lifestyle influences on health
Gender
Women live longer than men on average; young men are more likely to die from homicide
Ethnic Group Differences
Relationship between ethnicity and SES
Social, Gender, and Ethnic Issues in Health

12. 10.3 Cognitive Development
What is intelligence in adulthood?
What types of abilities have been identified? How do they change?
What is postformal thought? How does it differ from formal operations?
How do stereotypes influence thinking?
10.3 Cognitive Development

13. How Should We View Intelligence in Adults?
Multidemensional - characteristic of theories of intelligence that identify several types of intellectual abilities
Multidirectionality - developmental pattern in which some aspects of intelligence improve and other aspects decline during adulthood
Interindividual Variability - patterns of change that vary from one person to another
Plasticity - concept that intellectual abilities are not fixed by can be modified under the right conditions at just about under point in adulthood
How Should We View Intelligence in Adults?

14. What Happens to Intelligence in Adulthood?
Primary Abilities - groups of related intellectual skills (e.g., memory, spatial ability)
What Happens to Intelligence in Adulthood?

15. Secondary Abilities - broader intellectual skills that subsume and organize the primary abilities
Fluid Intelligence - abilities that make you a flexible and adaptive thinker, allow you to make inferences and to understand the relations among concepts
Crystallized Intelligence - the knowledge you acquired through life experience and education in a particular culture

16. Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood
Postformal Thought - thinking characterized by recognizing that the correct answer varies from one situation to another, that solutions should be realistic, that ambiguity and contradiction are typical, and that subjective factors play role in thinking
Reflective Judgment - way in which adults reason through real-life dilemmas
Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood

17. Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood
Optimal Level of Development - the higher level of information-processing of which a person is capable
Skill Acquisition - the gradual and haphazard process by which people learn new abilities
Integrating Emotion and Logic in Life Problems
Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood

18. Role of Stereotypes on Thinking
Stereotype - a social belief representing organized prior knowledge about a group of people that affects how we interpret new information
Implicit Stereotype - activation of strong stereotypes that is nonconscious, increasing the likelihood of their influencing behavior
Stereotype Threat - an evoked fear of being judges in accordance with a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong
Role of Stereotypes on Thinking

19. 10.4 Who Do You Want to Be? Personality in Young Adulthood
What is the life-span construct? How do adults create scenarios and life stories?
What are possible selves? Do they show differences during adulthood?
What are personal control beliefs?
10.4 Who Do You Want to Be? Personality in Young Adulthood

20. Creating Scenarios and Life Stories
Life-Span Construct - a unified sense of the past, present, and future based on personal experience and input from other people
Scenario - manifestation of the life-span construct through expectations about the future
Social Clock - tagging future events with a particular time or age by which they are to be completed
Creating Scenarios and Life Stories

21. McAdam’s Life Story Model
A personal narrative that organizes past events into a coherent sequence

22. Representations of what we could become, what we would like to become, and what we are afraid of becoming
Possible Selves

23. Personal Control Beliefs
The degree to which you believe your performance in a situation depends on something you do
Personal Control Beliefs