Chap 18 SG

Dialectical Thought

Cross-cultural research suggests that adult thought, at its best, may become dialectical thought, which some believe is the most advanced cognitive process (Basseches, 1984, 1989; Riegel, 1975). The word dialectic refers to the philosophical concept, developed by Hegel two centuries ago, that every idea or truth bears within itself the opposite idea or truth. To use the words of philosophers, each idea, or thesis, implies an opposing idea, or antithesis. Dialectical thought involves considering both of these poles of an idea simultaneously and then forging them into a synthesis—that is, a new idea that integrates the original and its opposite. Note that the synthesis is not a compromise; it is a new concept that incorporates both original ones in some transformative way For example, many young children idolize their parents (thesis), many adolescents are highly critical of their parents (antithesis), and many emerging adults appreciate their parents and forgive their shortcomings, which they attribute to their parents' background, historical conditions, and age (synthesis). Because ideas can engender their opposites, the possibility of change is continuous. Each new synthesis deepens and refines the thesis and antithesis that initiated it, with "cognitive development as the dance of adaptive transformation" (Sinnott, 2009, p. 103). Thus, dialectical thinking involves the constant integration of beliefs and experiences with all of the contradictions and inconsistencies of daily life Change throughout the life span is multidirectional, ongoing, and often surprising—a dynamic, dialectical process. Dialectical processes are readily observable by life-span researchers, who believe that "the occurrence and effective mastery of crises and conflicts represent not only risks but also opportunities for new development" (Baltes et al., 1998, p. 1041). Arnett, who coined the term emerging adulthood, wrote that brain organization allows the young adult to move past dualism to multiplicity (Tanner & Arnett, 2011), which can be seen as moving past thesis and antithesis, arriving at a synthesis that recognizes the many aspects of truth. Erikson described two opposites at each stage (intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation) causing a psychosocial "crisis" needing a synthesis to allow forward movement. New demands, roles, responsibilities, and conflicts become learning opportunities for the dialectical thinker. Students might take a class in an unfamiliar subject, employees might apply for an uncertain promotion, young adults might leave their parents' home and move to another town or nation. In such situations, when comfort collides with the desire for growth, dialectical thinkers find a new synthesis, gaining insight. This basic idea underlies all continuing education—that people of all ages keep learning because challenges require it

Combining objective/subjective thought

A more general example of synthesis is combining objective and subjective thought. Objective thought uses abstract, impersonal logic; subjective thought arises from personal experiences and perceptions; formal operational thinking values impersonal logic and devalues subjective emotions. Purely objective, logical thinking may be maladaptive when one is navigating the complexities and commitments of adult life, especially for the social understanding needed for productive families, workplaces, and neighborhoods. Subjective feelings and individual experiences must be taken into account because objective reasoning alone is limited, rigid, and impractical. Yet subjective thinking is also limited. Truly mature thought involves an interaction between abstract, objective forms of processing and expressive, subjective forms. Without this new synthesis of intellect and emotion, behavioral extremes (such as those that lead to binge eating, anorexia, obesity, addiction, and violence) and cognitive extremes (such as believing that one is the best or the worst person on Earth) are common. Those are typical of the egocentrism of adolescence—and of some adults as well. By contrast, dialectical thinkers are better able to balance personal experience with knowledge. Laura's thinking about alcohol is postformal in that it combines knowledge (e.g., of alcohol poisoning) with emotions (images flooding her head). Note that she is cautious, not abstinent; she has both objective awareness of her genetic potential and subjective experience of wanting to be part of the crowd. She combines both modes of thought to reach a conclusion that works for her, without needing searing personal experiences (becoming an uncontrollable heavy drinker and reaching despair) and then needing the other extreme (avoiding even one sip). This development of postformal thought regarding alcohol is seen in most U.S. adults over time. As explained in the previous chapter, those in their early 20s are more likely than people of any other age to abuse alcohol and other drugs. With personal experience and learning from others (social norms), however, cognitive maturity leads most adults to drink occasionally and moderately from then on.

Limits/criticism of Piaget's formal operational thinking

As you have read, some developmentalists dispute Piaget's stage theory of childhood cognition. The ranks of dissenters swell regarding this fifth stage. Two scholars writing about emerging adulthood ask, "Who needs stages anyway?" (Hendry & Kloep, 2011). Piaget himself never used the term postformal. If a cognitive stage requires a new set of intellectual abilities (such as the symbolic use of language that distinguishes sensorimotor from preoperational thought), then adulthood has no stages. But that definition may be too narrow. One scholar believes that Piaget would have described a postformal stage if he had turned his attention from children to adults. As this scholar writes: we hypothesize that there exists, after the formal thinking stage, a fifth stage of post-formal thinking, as Piaget had already studied its basic forms and would have concluded the same thing, had he the time to do so. Several other scholars criticize Piaget because he did not recognize the limits of formal operational thinking. They contend: Piaget assumed that formal operations was the penultimate level of cognitive development, but since about 1980, a number of researchers offered critiques of the implication that cognitive growth abated in adolescence. Instead, a number of proposals appeared that, though independent, converged on an extension of Piaget's theory. These extensions proposed that thinking needs to be integrated with emotional and pragmatic aspects, rather than only dealing with the purely abstract. [Labouvie-Vief, 2015, p. 89] The term fifth stage may not be completely accurate as Piaget would define it, and postformal may imply a depth of intellectual thought that few people attain, but adults can and often do reach a new cognitive level when their brains and life circumstances allow it.

Stage 5: Conjunctive faith.

Faith incorporates both emotional ideas (such as the power of prayer and the love of God) and rational conscious values (such as the worth of life compared with that of property). People are willing to accept contradictions. That is postformal thinking. Fowler says that this cosmic perspective is seldom achieved before middle age.

Stage 4: Individual-reflective faith.

Faith is characterized by intellectual detachment from the values of the culture and from the approval of other people. College may be a springboard to stage 4, as young people learn to question the authority of parents, professors, and other authorities and to rely instead on their own understanding of the world. Faith becomes an active commitment.

Stage 1: Intuitive-projective faith

Faith is magical, illogical, imaginative, and filled with fantasy, especially about the power of God and the mysteries of birth and death. It is typical of children ages 3 to 7.

Gender Differences in morality

In general, more women than men of every age attend religious services and identify with a religion. What this means for morality is debatable, however. Kohlberg found that males were more likely to reach the highest level of morality, but another Harvard professor, Carol Gilligan, argued that Kohlberg's six stages were insensitive to the morality of women. She contends that women typically must decide about child care and reproduction, about parenthood and abortion. Struggling with those issues may advance moral thinking According to Gilligan, girls are raised to develop a morality of care. They give human needs and relationships the highest priority. In contrast, boys develop a morality of justice; they are taught to distinguish right from wrong. However, other researchers have found that education, specific dilemmas (some situations evoke care and some justice), and culture correlate more strongly than gender with whether a person's moral judgments emphasize relationships or absolutes. How a woman or a man responds to a moral question may depend on their culture, not their gender Overall, the power of culture and cohort makes it difficult to prove that morality or religious beliefs advance over the years of adulthood, or the opposite. For example, compared to younger adults in the United States, older people tend to be less supportive of same-sex marriage and more troubled by divorce and single parenthood but more supportive of spending public money for mass transit and health. Do these age trends suggest that adults become more, or less, moral? Or perhaps asking the question is, itself, an indication of age-related morality. Younger people are less likely to think that various issues, including those just mentioned, are moral ones.

Stereotype continued and Claude Steele

One African American scholar, Claude Steele, thought of a third possibility. Perhaps the problem originated in the minds of young men, who hypothesized what was in the minds of other people. Steele labeled this stereotype threat, a "threat in the air," not in reality (Steele, 1997). The mere possibility of being negatively stereotyped may disrupt cognition and emotional regulation. Steele suspected that African American males, aware of the stereotype that they are poor students, become anxious in educational settings. Their anxiety may increase stress hormones that reduce their ability to respond to intellectual challenges. Then, if they score low, they protect their pride by denigrating academics. They come to believe that school doesn't matter, that people who are "book smart" are not "street smart." That belief leads them to disengage from high school and college, which results in lower achievement. The greater the threat, the worse they do Stereotype threat is more than a hypothesis. Hundreds of studies show that anxiety reduces achievement. The threat of a stereotype not only reduces achievement in African American men, it causes women to underperform in math, older people to be forgetful, bilingual students to stumble with English, and every member of a stigmatized minority in every nation to handicap themselves because of what they imagine others might think. Athletic prowess, health habits, and vocational aspiration may also be impaired if stereotype threat makes people anxious (Aronson et al., 2013). Every sphere of life may be affected. One recent example is that stereotype threat makes blind people underemployed because they hesitate to learn new skills The harm from anxiety is familiar to those who study sports psychology. When star athletes unexpectedly underperform (called "choking"), stereotype threat arising from past team losses may be the cause (Jordet et al., 2012). Many female players imagine that they are not expected to play as well as men (e.g., someone told them "you throw like a girl"), and that itself impairs performance. The worst part of stereotype threat is that it is self-imposed. People who are alert to the possibility of prejudice are not only hypersensitive when it occurs, but their minds are hijacked, undercutting potential. Their initial reaction may be to try harder to prove the stereotype wrong, and if that extra effort fails, they stop trying No one, including Steele, believes that stereotype threat is the only reason for unfair disparities in success and achievement. However, many developmentalists seek ways to eliminate, or at least reduce, stereotype threat. Fortunately, many successes have been reported , although "clearing the air" is not simple. Reminding people of their own potential, and the need to pursue their personal goals, is a beginning. Over the years of adulthood, people may confront their internalized self-doubts. Perhaps success in college or on the job, or years of affirmation from a partner, or coping with a health or family crisis, may undercut stereotype threat.

Stage 2: Mythic-literal faith

Individuals take the myths and stories of religion literally, believing simplistically in the power of symbols. God is seen as rewarding those who follow divine laws and punishing others. Stage 2 is typical from ages 7 to 11, but it also characterizes some adults. Fowler cites a woman who says extra prayers at every opportunity, to put them "in the bank."

Defining Issues Test and its use in teaching ethics in the Professions

Many researchers believe that adult responsibilities, experiences, and education are crucial in shaping a person's ethics. They believe that young adults begin a process that continues at least through middle age. Although adolescents may espouse moral principles, some researchers find that they are unlikely to apply those principles when making decisions about daily life. By contrast, with maturation and experience, adults increasingly consider their moral values. James Rest has studied moral development all his life. He says: Dramatic and extensive changes occur in young adulthood (the 20s and 30s) in the basic problem-solving strategies used to deal with ethical issues. . . . These changes are linked to fundamental reconceptualizations in how the person understands society and his or her stake in it. [Rest, 1993, p. 201] Rest found that college education may propel adults to shift their moral reasoning. This is especially likely if coursework includes extensive discussion of moral issues or if the student's future profession (such as law or medicine) requires ethical decisions. What is the best way to assess development of moral thinking? In Kohlberg's scheme, people discuss standard moral dilemmas, responding to various probes. Over decades of longitudinal research, Kohlberg thought that cognitive maturation and moral advances occur together (see Chapter 13). The Defining Issues Test (DIT) is another way to measure moral thinking. The DIT presents a series of questions with specific choices, including the option "can't decide." For example, in one DIT dilemma, a news reporter must decide whether to publish some old personal information that will damage a political candidate. Respondents rank their priorities from personal benefits ("credit for investigative reporting") to higher goals ("serving society"). In the DIT, the ranking of items leads to a number score, which correlates with other aspects of adult cognition, experience, and life satisfaction (Schiller, 1998). These correlations suggest that people who are more caring about other people are also more satisfied with their lives and that moral development advances with age. However, correlations are not proof. In general, DIT scores rise with age because adults gradually become less doctrinaire and self-serving and more flexible. However, most of the evidence comes from North American young adults—the WEIRD people Critics complain that the DIT measures only some aspects of moral development, and it is not sensitive to cross-cultural differences. Not only cognitive maturation but also religious conviction, postformal thought, moral courage, and social support are crucial in actual moral decisions according to critics of the DIT. It is difficult to measure all of these factors, especially because one person's moral choice may be the opposite of another's The DIT has often been used on college campuses, in business, nursing, pharmacy, engineering, accounting departments, and so on, to measure advances in moral thought. For instance, one such course for business students in Arkansas exposed students to five major faiths (almost all of the students were Christian and a few were Jewish, so learning about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam was new to them). The instructors asked students to write, and rewrite, a "personal mission statement" as one indication of learning in the course (Herzog et al., 2016). Here are two of the final statements: [My mission is] being an authentic, genuine and reliable leader that others can admire, look up to and aspire to be. Establish and create a work environment that is welcoming and accepting of all people who come from different backgrounds, experiences and walks of life. Challenge myself to seek opportunities to try or learn something new as often as possible. Vow to surround myself with individuals different from myself, ask questions and search for answers in order to cultivate growth. Another wrote: I was very interested in the idea of learning more about the world religions and how they hold power over the hearts and minds of so many people. In doing so I had hoped to strengthen my own beliefs as well. I feel as though I have accomplished both of these initiatives. Learning from the many speakers we have had has been incredibly insightful. The Buddhist monk was especially interesting to me. His illustration of Logic and reason as a sort of salvation from the world was incredible. While I disagree with him in this it was an amazing experience to hear from him about his beliefs. By the end of the course, many students thought in the adult mode, welcoming ideas that they did not know before. Their DIT scores were higher than those of students in the same curriculum who did not take this course. Many reaffirmed their own religious beliefs in the process

Dialectical thought on marriage/relationships

Now consider an example of dialectical thought familiar to many: the end of a love affair. A nondialectical thinker might believe that each person has stable, enduring, independent traits. Faced with a troubled romance, then, a nondialectical thinker concludes that one partner (or the other) is at fault, or perhaps the relationship was a mistake from the beginning because the two were a bad match. By contrast, dialectical thinkers see people and relationships as constantly evolving; partners are changed by time as well as by their interaction. Therefore, a romance becomes troubled not because the partners are fundamentally incompatible, or because one or the other is fatally flawed, but because they have changed without adapting to each other. Marriages do not "break" or "fail"; they either continue to develop over time (dialectically) or they stagnate as the two people move apart. For relationships.... Everyone is upset when a relationship ends, but neurological immaturity may make adolescents overcome by jealousy or despair, unable to find the synthesis. Older couples may think dialectically and move from former thesis ("I love you because you are perfect") to antithesis ("I hate you—you are selfish and mean") to synthesis ("Neither of us is perfect, but together we can grow"). A dialectic perspective not only encourages adults to work together on their relationships but also helps them cope in a breakup. Many adults feel guilty after divorce, switching from blaming their partner to blaming themselves. Some manage a dialectical response: seeing their divorce as an opportunity to look at themselves more closely and make necessary changes, thus moving from the thesis (my partner was bad) and antithesis (I am bad) to synthesis (I can learn from this)

Stage 6: Universalizing faith

People at this stage have a powerful vision of universal compassion, justice, and love that compels them to live their lives in a way that others may think is either saintly or foolish. A transforming experience is often the gateway to stage 6, as happened to Moses, Muhammad, the Buddha, and Paul of Tarsus, as well as more recently to Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa (now Saint Teresa of Calcutta). Stage 6 is rarely achieved.

Stereotypes

Postformal thought allows adults to question childhood assumptions. Young adults show many signs of such flexibility. The very fact that emerging adults marry later, sometimes crossing ethnic or religious lines to do so, indicates that, couple by couple, thinking is not determined by childhood culture or by traditional norms. Early experiences are influential, but postformal thinkers are not stuck in them. Consider stereotypes. We all have them, developed in childhood. Remember the prejudices of boys about girls, and vice versa, that develop in almost every child during preoperational egocentric thinking. When my 6-year-old daughter said that she didn't like boys, and I said, "Daddy is a boy and you like him," she said he was an exception. Some gender prejudices tumble when the hormones of puberty take over—that same daughter told me, at age 11, that she liked boys. But other examples of childhood prejudice —about race, religion, nationality, or even children who live on one city block versus children living a block away—are more durable. Teenage gangs depend on them. Every adult probably holds some childish stereotypes, as well. Fortunately, postformal thinking allows less stereotyped thinking. Research on ethnic prejudice is an easy example. Many people are less prejudiced about other ethnic or religious groups than their parents. This is a cohort change, resulting in part from broader experience with people of other groups. However, people may overestimate their own tolerance. Tests—both on a computer and with brain scans— often reveal implicit discrimination (Amodio, 2014). Thus, many adults have both unconscious prejudice and rational tolerance—a combination that illustrates dual processing. The wider the gap between explicit and implicit, the stronger the stereotype. Ideally, postformal reasoning allows rational thinking to overcome emotional reactions, with responses dependent on reality, not stereotypes (Sinnott, 2014). A characteristic of adult thinking is the flexibility that allows recognition and reconciliation of contradictions, thus reducing prejudice

Dialectical thought in schoolwork

Seeing advantages and disadvantages in every course of action, weighing personal and political consequences, is characteristic of dialectical thought but is not the "fast and furious" thinking that some people prefer. True dialectical thought allows people to reflect on other viewpoints, considering them with respect even when they seem, at first, ridiculous. Consider this problem: Every card in a pack has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Imagine that you are presented with the following four cards, each of which has something on the back. Turn over only those cards that will confirm or disconfirm this proposition: If a card has a vowel on one side, then it always has an even number on the other side. E 7 K 4 The difficulty of this puzzle is "notorious in the literature of human reasoning" (Moshman, 2011, p. 50). Fewer than 10 percent of college students solve it when working independently. Almost everyone wants to turn over the E and the 4—and almost everyone is mistaken. However, when groups of college students who had guessed wrong on their own then had a chance to discuss the problem together, 75 percent got it right: They avoided the 4 card (even if it has a consonant on the other side, the statement could still be true) and selected the E and the 7 cards (if the 7 has a vowel on the other side, the proposition is proved false). As in this example, adults can think things through and change their minds after listening (Moshman, 2011). Think about a time when you thought one thing that is opposite to what you now think. Probably a combination of logic and social experience caused you to develop your new view. This is cognitive flexibility, duel processing becoming a synthesis.

Dialectical thought in cultures

Several researchers have compared cognition in East Asian and North American adults, focusing on dialectical thought. It may be that ancient Greek philosophy led Europeans and Americans to use analytic, absolutist logic—to take sides in a battle between right and wrong, good and evil—whereas Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism led the Chinese and other Asians to seek compromise, the "Middle Way." For whatever reason, several researchers find that Asians tend to think holistically, about the whole rather than the parts, seeking the synthesis because "in place of logic, the Chinese developed a dialectic" (Nisbett et al., 2001, p. 294). One example is in judging emotions: Westerners are more likely to pay close attention to facial expressions, and Asians are more likely to consider the context, such as surrounding circumstances. This may leave Asians open to more possibilities and make them less likely to conclude that one answer is the only correct one. For example, a study of Canadians, some of them immigrants from China and others native-born, found that the Asian Canadians were more likely to consider many perspectives and thus were less opinionated and more indecisive (L. Li et al., 2014). Another series of studies compared three groups of students: Koreans in Seoul, South Korea; Korean Americans who had lived most of their lives in the United States; and U.S.-born European Americans. Individuals in all three groups were told the following: Suppose that you are the police officer in charge of a case involving a graduate student who murdered a professor. . . . As a police officer, you must establish motive. Participants were given a list of 97 items of information and were asked to identify the ones they would want to know as they looked for the killer's motive. Some of the 97 items were clearly relevant (e.g., whether the professor had publicly ridiculed the graduate student), and virtually everyone in all three groups chose them. Some were clearly irrelevant (e.g., the student's favorite color), and almost everyone left them out. Other items were questionable (e.g., what the professor was doing that fateful night; how the professor was dressed). Compared with both groups of Americans, the students in Korea asked for 15 more items, on average. The researchers suggest that their culture had taught these students to include the entire context in order to find a holistic synthesis (Choi et al., 2003). Of course, too much can be made of the distinction between Asian and North American thought. Research on dialectical thinking finds that the Chinese, for instance, are more likely to believe that someone can be good and bad at the same time (Boucher et al., 2009), but certainly some Westerners (including your author) agree. Most developmentalists believe that flexible thinking is more advanced than simply sticking to one thesis. Piaget defined intelligence as the ability to advance when intellectual disequilibrium occurred. For example, students who get an F on a test in a subject they thought they knew experience disequilibrium, but the intelligent student does not blame others and become depressed. Instead, he or she talks to others (perhaps including the professor) and develops new strategies for learning. Disequilibrium and then rethinking is more likely to occur as adults share their thoughts and experiences with each other, reaching conclusions that they would not have found on their own.

Fowler's six stages of faith

The five faith traditions study in Arkansas raises a question. What happens to religious beliefs from ages 18 to 65? There is a paradox here: From adolescence to adulthood, people are less likely to attend religious services but more likely to see themselves as having religious convictions (Barry et al., 2012). Most young adults consider themselves at least as spiritual as they were when younger (Smith & Snell, 2009). Spiritual struggles—including "questioning one's religious/spiritual beliefs; feeling unsettled about spiritual and religious matters; struggling to understand evil, suffering, and death; [and] feeling angry at God" (Bryant & Astin, 2008, p. 2)—are not unusual at the beginning of adulthood. Maturation may move adults past the doctrinaire religion of childhood to a more flexible, dialectical, postformal faith. To describe this process, James Fowler (1981, 1986) developed a now-classic sequence of six stages of faith, building on the work of Piaget and Kohlberg. Before any thought occurs, a person is at "zero," when religion simply reflects children's relationship with their parents. Then thought begins. If Fowler is correct, faith, like other aspects of cognition, progresses from a simple, self-centered, one-sided perspective to a more complex, altruistic (unselfish), and many-sided view. That seems plausible, but quantitative data are limited (Parker, 2010). Other data indicate that people are more likely to identify with a particular religion, less often claiming to be spiritual but not religious, over the years of adulthood

Stage 3: Synthetic-conventional faith.

This is a conformist stage. Faith is conventional, reflecting concern about other people and favoring "what feels right" over what makes intellectual sense. Fowler quotes a man whose personal rules include "being truthful with my family. Not trying to cheat them out of anything. . . . I'm not saying that God or anybody else set my rules. I really don't know. It's what I feel is right."

Stereotype threat

Unfortunately, many people do not recognize their own stereotypes, even when false beliefs harm them. One of the most pernicious results is stereotype threat, arising in people who worry that other people might judge them as stupid, lazy, oversexed, or worse because of their ethnicity, sex, age, or appearance. Stereotype threat is apparent at every age, when children and adults become aware of what other people might think. The central concept of stereotype threat is that people have a stereotype that other people think in a stereotypical manner. Then the possibility of being stereotyped arouses emotions and hijacks memory, disrupting cognition (Schmader, 2010), as further explained on the next page One statistic has troubled social scientists for decades: African American men have lower grades in high school and earn far fewer college degrees than African American women. Among the women, aged 25 to 36 years, 23 percent hold bachelor's degrees; only 17 percent of the men do (Kena et al., 2015). This cannot be genetic, since the women have the same genes (except for one of the 46 chromosomes) as the men, and it cannot be neighborhood or SES, since families raise their boys and girls together. Most scientists blame the historical context as well as current discrimination, which falls particularly hard on men. African American women have an easier time finding employment, and African American men are 17 times more often in prison than women. (For every group, more men than women are in prison, but the sex ratio among African Americans is twice the ratio overall.) The unarmed African Americans who are killed are almost always men Another hypothesis focuses on parenting. According to one study, African American mothers grant far more autonomy to their teenage boys and hold higher and stricter standards for their teenage girls. These researchers suggest that if sons and daughters were treated equally, most gender differences in achievement would disappear.

Postformal thought

a "type of logical, adaptive problem-solving that is a step more complex than scientific formal-level Piagetian tasks" "one can conceive of multiple logics, choices, or perceptions . . . in order to better understand the complexities and inherent biases in 'truth'" Postformal thinkers do not wait for someone else to present a problem to solve. They take a flexible and comprehensive approach, considering various aspects of a situation beforehand, anticipating problems, and dealing with difficulties rather than denying, avoiding, or procrastinating. As a result, postformal thought is practical as well as creative. adolescents use two modes of thought (dual processing) but have difficulty combining them. They use formal analysis to learn science, distill principles, develop arguments, and resolve the world's problems. Alternatively, they think spontaneously and emotionally about personal issues, such as what to wear, whom to befriend, whether to skip class. For personal issues, they prefer quick actions and reactions, only later realizing the consequences. Postformal thinkers are less impulsive and reactive. They take a more flexible and comprehensive approach, with forethought, noting difficulties and anticipating problems, instead of denying, avoiding, or procrastinating. As a result, postformal thinking is practical, creative, and imaginative Since postformal thinking is characterized by strategic flexibility and reconciling conflicting demands, time allocation may signify thought processes. The best use of time is not simple: International studies find that adult happiness and health are connected to enough, but not too much, sleep, exercise, work, leisure, and so on. Substantial variation occurs by culture, age, gender, and cohort, although generally people procrastinate less over the years of adulthood. That correlates with more success and happiness. Contrast adults with adolescents, who tend to be impulsive, reacting quickly and procrastinating irrationally. In adulthood, postformal intellectual skills are harnessed to real educational, occupational, and interpersonal concerns. Conclusions and consequences matter; setting priorities includes postponing some tasks in order to accomplish others. You can see evidence that time management improves after adolescence by comparing the expectations of high school and college instructors. Most college professors assume that their students can manage time. Therefore, they distribute a syllabus on day one with assignments and due dates for the entire semester. Adult students planning their work on a term paper that is due in a month think of personal emotions and traits (e.g., anxiety, perfectionism), other obligations (at home and at work), and practical considerations (rewriting, library reserves, computer and printer availability, formatting). Adolescents might ignore all of this until the last moment: Teachers of teenagers combat their poor time-management skills by having intermediary due dates (topic chosen, outline, bibliography, first draft, and so on). Many adult writers consider rewriting again and again a crucial part of the creative process: Few younger students have time for that. Postformal cognition also helps adults to work together, coordinating collaboration, as in a parental alliance, a work team, or a group study session. To study how young adults work together, and the importance of time management, professors in four nations (United Sates, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) required student teams to produce a major project by the end of the course. Periodically, the researchers assessed the teams' work. When teammates shared expectations for time allocation, and coordinated the scheduling of their individual efforts, everyone's satisfaction increased