PSYCH TEST 4

Divorce

The U.S. divorce rate hit its lowest point since 1970 in 2014 at 3.2 divorces per 1,000 married women; about 1 in 5 U.S. adults has been divorced. The decline in divorce may reflect higher educational levels as well as the later age of first marriages, both of which are associated with marital stability. The decline may also reflect the rise in cohabitation, which, if it ends, does not end in divorce.

Primary Sex Characteristics

organs directly related to reproduction. In the female, the sex organs include the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, clitoris, and vagina. In the male, they include the tests, penis, scrotum, seminal vesicles, and prostate gland.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning: conventional

people are concerned about being good, pleasing others, and maintaining social order

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning: Postconventional

people make judgement based on universal principles of justice and fairness

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning: Preconventional

people obey rules to avoid punishment and reap rewards

The Adolescent Growth Spurt

refers to the rapid increase in height, weight, and muscle and bone growth that occurs during puberty. It generally begins in girls about 10 and about 12 or 13 in boys; it lasts about 2 years and ends with the young person reaching sexual maturity.

Adolescence as a Social Construction

"Adolescence" is not a clearly defined physical or biological category; it is a social construction. Historically, children entered the adult world when they matured physically or began a vocational apprenticeship. In most parts of the world, adolescence lasts longer and is less clear-cut than in the past because puberty starts earlier and the amount of required training has increased for higher-paying occupations.

Identity Development (2)

A postindustrial society offers little guidance and less pressure to grow up. Only about a third of Western youth go through a self-conscious crisis leading to identity achievement (i.e., moratorium). Still, three of four young adults settle into an occupational identity by their late 20s. Identity confusion persists for 10-20 percent of young adults who lack fidelity: faith in something larger than themselves.

Physical and Mental Health

About 1.2 billion people—1 in 6—are adolescents. Nine out of ten 11- to 15-year-olds in Western industrialized countries consider themselves healthy. Still, many adolescents, especially girls, report frequent health problems. Across many countries, adolescents from less affluent families report poorer health relative to teens from more affluent families who have healthier diets and are more physically active.

Extramarital Sexual Activity

About 18 percent of married people report having had extramarital relations at some time during their married lives. Infidelity is most prevalent among young adults and is about twice as common among husbands as among wives. The Internet is increasingly used to initiate affairs; online-only affairs are perceived as betrayals similar to physical affairs, resulting in a loss of trust, psychological distress, and trauma.

Marcia: Crisis & Commitment

According to Marcia, identities are forged through crisis, a period of conscious decision making, and commitment, personal investment in an occupation or system of beliefs. Identity achievement is commitment to choices following a crisis exploring alternatives. Foreclosure is commitment without a crisis. Moratorium is crisis without commitment. Diffusion involves a lack of both a crisis and a commitment to an identity.

The Search for Identity

Adolescence is a time to figure out who you are. Identity is a coherent conception of the self made up of goals, values and beliefs to which a person is solidly committed.

Adolescence and Puberty

Adolescence is the developmental transition between childhood and adulthood entailing major physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes. Adolescence roughly encompasses the years between 11 and about 20. An important physical change in adolescence is the onset of puberty, the process by which a person attains sexual maturity and the ability to reproduce.

Piagetian Cognitive Development: Formal Operations

Adolescents enter what Piaget called the highest level of cognitive development—formal operations—the ability to think abstractly. Beginning around age 11, children can use symbols to represent other symbols in algebra, better appreciate hidden messages in metaphor and allegory, think in terms of what "might be" versus what "is," and can form and test hypotheses.

Where Teens Get Information about Sex

Adolescents get their information about sex primarily from friends, parents, sex education in school, and in the media. Teens who can talk about sex with older siblings and parents are more likely to have positive attitudes toward safer sexual practices. However, 22 percent of teen girls and 30 percent of teen boys report their parents do not talk to them about any sexual or reproductive health topics.

Emotional Intelligence

Another conceptualization of effective, intelligent behavior is emotional intelligence: the ability to understand and regulate emotions. Emotional intelligence is measured with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. College students who score high on this test are more likely to report positive relationships with parents, friends, and romantic partners. Among employees, higher scores are related to higher salaries and more promotions.

Adolescents and Siblings

As adolescents spend more time with peers, they spend less time with siblings. Sibling conflict declines across middle adolescence. Siblings can exert positive and negative effects on each other.

Adolescents and Peers

As children move into adolescence, the peer social system becomes more diverse. Cliques—structured groups of friends who do things together—become more important. A larger type of grouping, the crowd, such as the jocks and the nerds, does not normally exist before adolescence. Crowds are social constructions based on reputation or identity. Peer influence peaks around 12-13 and declines during middle and late adolescence.

Parenting Styles and Parental Authority

Authoritative parents foster healthy psychosocial development by controlling a child's conduct (i.e., behavioral control) but not controlling his or her feelings, beliefs, and sense of self (i.e., psychological control). Generally, behavioral control is preferable. Psychological control can harm adolescents' psychosocial development and mental health. Problems arise when parents overstep what teens perceive as appropriate bounds of legitimate parental authority.

Depression

Between ages 15 and 22, the incidence of depression increases gradually. People with major depressive disorders often have depressed or irritable moods for most of the day, show reduced interest in previously pleasurable activities, experience significant changes in weight, and have difficulty sleeping. Young women are more likely to suffer from a major depressive episode and attempt suicide relative to young men.

Research In Action: Dating and Technology

Between texting, messenger apps, and social media sites, teens have many outlets to explore early dating experiences. An overwhelming majority of teens agree that technology plays a large role in dating. While the majority of teens meet romantic partners in school, some teenagers develop online relationships. Teenagers view technology as a means of reinforcing existing romantic relationships as well.

Body Image and Eating Disorders

Body image refers to descriptive and evaluative beliefs about one's appearance. Sometimes a concern with body image may lead to obsessive efforts at weight control.

Entering the World of Work

By their mid-20s, most emerging adults are either working or pursuing advanced education. While previous generations of employees could expect to remain at a company from start date until retirement, more and more contemporary adults are self-employed, working at home, telecommuting, on flexible work schedules, or acting as independent contractors. These changes make education and training more vital than ever.

Parenthood and Marital Satisfaction

Celebrating a child's birthday is one joy of parenthood. That being said, studies show that marital satisfaction typically declines during the child-raising years, and the more children, the greater the decline.

Cognitive Growth in College

College is a time of intellectual discovery and personal growth, particularly in verbal and quantitative skills and critical thinking. A longitudinal student of college students found that, overall, their thinking progressed from rigidity to flexibility, and choosing their own beliefs on the basis of reflection. Students make a commitment within relativism, forming their own judgments and trusting their own opinions.

The College Transition

College is an increasingly important path to adulthood. Enrollments in the United States are at an all-time high. More than two out of three high school graduates go right to college.

Marriage (2)

Despite vast demographics changes over the last 50 years, about 90 percent of U.S. adults will still opt to marry at some point in their lives. Many urban young adults view traditional marriage with its rigid gender roles as no longer viable. They still plan to marry, but only when they feel financially ready. Rural young adults tend to see marriage as inevitable, marry early, and hold traditional views of marriage.

The Adolescent Brain

Dramatic changes in brain structures take place between puberty and young adulthood. The adolescent brain experiences a steady increase in white matter connecting distant portions of the brain, improving information-processing abilities. Pruning also continues throughout adolescence, resulting in fewer but stronger, smoother, and more effective neuronal connections, making cognitive processing more efficient.

Relationships with Parents

Emerging adults still need parental acceptance, empathy, and support. Positive parent-child relationships in adolescence predict warmer relationships when the children reach age 26.

Adjusting to Divorce

Ending an unhappy marriage can be painful, especially when there are young children. Issues concerning custody and visitation often force divorced parents to maintain stressful contact. Women in unhappy marriages benefit more from the dissolution than men. An important factor in adjustment is emotional detachment from the former spouse. An active social life, both at the time of divorce and afterward, helps.

When does a person become an adult?

For most people, three criteria define adulthood: •Accepting personal responsibility •Making independent decisions •Becoming financially independent For many young people, the late teens through mid-to-late 20s is a distinct period of emerging adulthood between adolescence and adulthood.

Smoothing the Transition to Work

Four key factors predict a successful transition. •Competence •Personal characteristics such as initiative and a sense of urgency •Positive personal relationships •Links between schooling and employment Work affects day-to-day life not only on the job but at home, and it brings both satisfaction and stress.

Adolescent Friendships

Friendship is perhaps more important in adolescence than in any other life period. As intimacy increases, adolescent friendships are more reciprocal and stable than childhood friendships. Adolescents who are intimate with friends tend to do well in school and have high self-esteem.

Failure to Launch

Globalization has made it difficult for young adults in the United States to establish an economically viable independent household. The view that young adults who "fail to launch" are selfish slackers is largely inaccurate. The trend to live in parents' homes also exists in other countries. In Southern Europe, approximately 60 percent of emerging adults live in the parental home, suggesting a new developmental stage of in-house adulthood.

Stress

High levels of stress are related to a host of physical and immunological impairments. In some cases, stress leads young adults to engage in drinking or smoking. Stressed out college students are more likely to eat junk food, exercise less, and have poor sleep. Relationships may help people cope with stress; individuals in secure relationships experienced less interpersonal stress and used more adaptive coping styles.

Adolescents in the Workplace

In the United States, about 18 percent of students are employed during a given school year. Researchers disagree over whether part-time work is beneficial to high school students (e.g., helping develop real-world skills) or detrimental (e.g., distracting them from long-term goals). How much time students work matters: those who work more than 20 hours a week generally suffer academically and are more likely to drop out of school.

Parenthood (2)

In 2015, 40.3 percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women, a decline for the seventh straight year from the historic high of 41 percent in 2009. The U.S. fertility rate is higher than in several other developed countries. Still, an increasing proportion of U.S. couples remain childless. The percentage of households with children fell from 45 percent in 1970 to about 28.7 percent in 2016. Some couples see marriage as a way to enhance intimacy, not as an institution to childrearing.

Parenthood

In 2015, the average age of first births in the United States rose to 26.4 years. The percentage of women giving birth for the first time in their late 30s and 40s has increased dramatically.

Depression

In 2016, 12.8 percent of children ages 12-17 experienced major depression; prevalence rates increase during adolescence. Symptoms may manifest in adolescence as irritability, boredom, or an inability to experience pleasure. Being female is a risk factor for depression. Other risk factors include anxiety, stressful life events, chronic illnesses, abuse or neglect, alcohol and drug use.

Why Do Marriages Fail?

In a study of 130 divorced U.S. women, the most frequently cited reasons for divorce included •Incompatibility and lack of emotional support. •Lack of career support. •Spousal abuse. Other risk factors include premarital cohabitation, infidelity, a husband's unemployment, and greater economic independence among wives.

Sternberg: Insight and Know-How

In contrast to Piaget's emphasis on analytical thinking, Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence includes three types of knowledge: componential (analytic), experiential (creative), and contextual (practical).

Adolescents and Parents

Just as teens feel tension between dependency on their parents and the need to break away, parents want their children to be independent, yet find it hard to let go. Individuation refers to adolescents' struggle for autonomy and personal identity that began in infancy. Parents must strike a delicate balance between too much freedom and too much intrusiveness.

Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg argued that most people did not reach postconventional reasoning based on universal principles until their 20s, if at all. Postconventional reasoning requires experience, in particular encountering conflicting values and being responsible for the welfare of others. For example, students who regularly attend church are less likely to cheat on a task. People who experience traumas tend to rely on lower levels of moral reasoning.

Student Motivation and Self-Efficacy

Many U.S. students are not self-motivated, and motivation often declines as they enter high school. However, students who have high self-efficacy—who believe that they can successfully achieve academic goals—are likely to do well in school.

Outcomes of Teenage Pregnancy

Many teen mothers are impoverished, poorly educated, do not eat properly, do not gain enough weight, and get inadequate prenatal care or none at all. They are also at heightened risk for academic problems and to drop out of school. However, two decades after giving birth, most former adolescent mothers are not on welfare, many have finished high school and have jobs, and they do not have large families.

Sleep

Many young adults often go without adequate sleep. Among college students, family life and academic stresses are associated with insomnia. Sleep deprivation impairs physical health and cognitive, emotional, and social functioning. The primary cognitive consequence is impaired attention and vigilance. Sleep deprivation also increases distractibility and depression. Adequate sleep improves learning; a short nap can prevent burnout.

Marital Satisfaction

Married people tend to be happier than unmarried people (although unhappy married people are less happy than those who are unmarried or divorced). Marital satisfaction is positively affected by increased economic resources, equal decision making, and nontraditional gender attitudes. Marital happiness is negatively affected by premarital cohabitation, affairs, wives' job demands, and wives' longer working hours.

Changes in Information Processing

Maturation of the brain's frontal lobes changes the way adolescents process information. Structural changes include increasing working memory capacity and an increasing amount of knowledge stored in long-term memory including •Declarative knowledge. •Procedural knowledge. •Conceptual knowledge.

Sperm Production and Menstruation

Maturation of the reproductive organs brings about menstruation in girls and sperm production in boys. For boys, the first ejaculation, or spermarche, occurs around age 13. It can be experienced as a nocturnal emission while sleeping. For girls, menstruation is the monthly shedding of tissue from the lining of the womb. The first menstruation is called menarche and usually begins by age 12.5.

Use and Abuse of Drugs

Most adolescents do not abuse drugs, but a significant minority do. Substance abuse is the harmful use of alcohol or other drugs. Abuse can lead to substance dependence, or "addiction," which may be physiological, psychological, or both, and is likely to continue into adulthood. About 12 percent of teens will at some point receive treatment for alcohol and more than 18 percent for illicit drug use.

Health Status

Most emerging and young adults in the United States report being in good to excellent health. Accidents are the leading cause of death for young Americans ages 20-44. Emerging and young adults have the highest poverty rate and the lowest level of health insurance of any age group; they often have no regular access to health care.

Parental Involvement of Men and Women

Most mothers now work outside the home. Despite this trend, mothers spend more time on child care than their counterparts in the 1960s. Today, only about 30 percent of children live with a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother. Generally, fathers are not as involved as mothers, although their amount of time has also gone up. Fathers with long working hours report wanting more time to spend with their children but being unable to do so.

Erikson's Normative Stage Model

Normative-stage models assume that adults follow a basic sequence of age-related psychosocial changes. The challenge of young adulthood is intimacy versus isolation. Resolution results in the virtue of love: mutual devotion between partners to share their lives and have children.

Completing College

Only 55 percent of U.S. students who start college have received a degree after 5 years. Graduation depends on motivation, academic aptitude and preparation, independent work, social integration, and social support.

Exercise

Only about one-third of U.S. high school students engage in the recommended amounts of physical activity. Regular exercise benefits teens in terms of improved strength and endurance, healthier bones and muscle, weight control, reduced anxiety and stress, and increased self-esteem, grades, and well-being.

Cognitive Growth at Work

People seem to grow in challenging jobs, the kind that are becoming increasingly prevalent today. Substantive complexity at work that requires thought and independent judgment is associated with a person's flexibility in coping. According to the spillover hypothesis, cognitive gains at work carry over to nonworking hours. Substantive complexity at work strongly influences the intellectual level of leisure activities.

How Puberty Begins: Hormonal Changes

Puberty begins with a cascade of hormonal responses. The hypothalamus releases elevated levels of gonadotropin-releasing hormone In girls, leads to the onset of menstruation. In boys, initiates the release of two additional hormones: testosterone and androstenedione.

Identity Development (stages)

Recentering, which is the primary task of emerging adulthood, is a three-stage process underlying the shift to an adult identity. Stage 1: the person is embedded in the family of origin, but expectations of self-reliance increase Stage 2: the person is connected but no longer embedded in the family (e.g., in college) Stage 3: the person is independent of the family (but still close) and committed to a career, a partner, and possibly children

Teenage Pregnancy and Childbearing

Since about 1990, a substantial decline in teenage pregnancy has accompanied •Decreases in early intercourse and multiple partners. •An increase in contraceptive use. Programs that focus on teen outreach have had some success by combining comprehensive sex education and access to family planning services.

Sleep Needs and Problems

Sleep deprivation among adolescents has been called an epidemic: 45 percent get insufficient sleep, 31 percent are borderline, and 20 percent sleep the recommended amount. By 12th grade, 75 percent of teens do not sleep a full 8 hours, which is problematic given that adolescents need as much or more sleep than when they were younger. Sleep deprivation causes irritability, and concentration and school performance suffers.

Self-Disclosure

Teens and parents disagree on the types of behaviors that are expected to be disclosed. Parents and teens agree that prudential issues involving health and safety are most subject to disclosure. Moral, conventional, and multifaceted issues such as lying and seeing an R-rated movie are somewhat subject to full disclosure. Personal issues such as how teens spend their time and money are least subject to disclosure.

Physical Activity

The benefits of being physically active include •Maintaining desirable body weight. •Building muscle. •Strengthening the heart and lungs. •Protection against heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Death in Adolescence

The leading cause of death among U.S. teens is motor vehicle collisions, accounting for one-third of all deaths in adolescence. Homicides and suicide are the second and third leading causes of death in the United States. Firearm-related deaths are far more common in the United States than in other industrialized countries.

Single Life

The proportion of young adults ages 25-34 in the United States who have not yet married tripled between 1970 and 2005. Between 1970 and 2007, there was a significant decline in the marriage rate in almost all countries.

Is Adolescent Rebellion a Myth?

The teenage years have been called a time of adolescent rebellion: a pattern of emotional turmoil that is characteristic of a minority of teens involving conflict with family, alienation, and a rejection of adult values. However, most young people feel close to their parents and value their approval.

Love

The triangular theory of love hinges on the balance of three elements: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Passion is higher at the beginning of the relationship and declines as commitment increases.

Typological Models

The typological approach identifies three broad personality types including ego-resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled. The three types differ in terms of ego resiliency, or adaptability under stress, and ego control: the self-regulation of impulses. Ego-resilient people are confident, attentive, and helpful. Overcontrolled people are quiet, anxious, and dependable. Undercontrolled people are active, stubborn, and impulsive.

The Timing of Puberty

There is a secular trend in the onset of puberty spanning several generations: a drop in the ages when puberty begins. A variety of explanations includes •A higher standard of living and better nutrition. •The role of body fat triggering puberty is linked to rising obesity rates. •Stress levels due to factors like being firstborn and harsh parenting practices.

Adolescents and Parents (2)

Too little oversight and too much intrusion by parents are both associated with an increased influence from antisocial peers. The most common arguments between parents and teens involve control over everyday personal matters like chores, schoolwork, dress, money, curfews, dating, and friends. Adolescents who are given more decision-making opportunities report higher self-esteem than those who are given fewer choices.

Gender and College

Women now make up a larger percentage (56 percent) of the student population. By comparison, in 1970, women made up only 42 percent of those earning bachelor's degrees. In the United States, women remain more likely than men to major in traditionally women's fields, such as education, nursing, and psychology, but they have made gains in almost every field, including professional fields of law and medicine. Women now earn 57 percent of postgraduate degrees.

Cognition in Adulthood

Young adults can engage in reflective thinking, which involves continuous, active evaluation of information and beliefs in the light of evidence and implications. Research since the 1970s suggests that mature thinking is more complex than Piaget described. A higher stage of adult cognition is postformal thought relying on subjective experience and intuition as well as logic. It allows room for ambiguity, contradictions, and compromise.

Romantic relationships

are a central part of most adolescents' social worlds. They typically move from mixed groups or group dates to one-on-one romantic relationships involving passion and a sense of commitment. By age 16, adolescents interact with and think about romantic partners more than parents, friends, or siblings. Relationships with parents may affect the quality of romantic relationships.

Secondary Sex Characteristics

are physiological signs of sexual maturation that do not involve the sex organs, such as the development of breasts in females and broad shoulders in males.

Trait models

focus on mental, emotional, temperamental, and behavioral attributes. The five-factor model consists of dimensions referred to as the "Big Five." •Openness to experience •Conscientiousness •Extraversion •Agreeableness •Neuroticism

Marriage

has been affected by demographic and economic changes. Mass weddings in India, organized by social workers for impoverished families, are an example of the wide variety of marriage customs around the world.

Friendship

in young adulthood is often less stable than in adolescence or later adulthood due to frequent relocations. Nevertheless, many young adults maintain high-quality, committed friendships sometimes using social networking sites to keep in touch.

Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

involves a scientific approach to problem solving that involves developing and testing hypotheses. Psychologists have critiqued Piaget's work. Many adolescents and adults seem incapable of abstract thought as Piaget defined it. Piaget paid little attention to social and cultural influences or other cognitive advances like metacognition—thinking about thinking—which may be the chief advance of adolescent thought.

Cohabitation

is an increasingly common lifestyle in which an unmarried couple involved in a sexual relationship lives together. The prevalence varies widely across countries. In 2016, an estimated 7.2 million U.S. couples cohabitated. Cohabitating relationships tend to be less satisfying and less stable than marriages. Cohabitation after divorce is more common than premarital cohabitation, but it delays remarriage and contributes to instability in a new marriage.

Infertility

is the inability to conceive a child after 12 months of sexual intercourse without birth control. Delayed childbearing and fertility drugs increase the likelihood of multiple births.

Erikson: Identity Versus Identity Confusion

so as to become a unique adult with a coherent sense of self and a valued role in society. Resolving the challenge leads to the virtue of fidelity: sustained loyalty, faith, or a sense of belonging to a love one, friends, or companions. Unresolved identity development results in an unstable self, insecurity, and a failure to plan for the future.

Factors Associated with Early Sex

•Early puberty •Poverty •Poor school performance •History of sexual abuse or neglect •Cultural or family patterns •Perception of peer norms

Individual paths to adulthood are influenced by

•Gender. •Academic ability. •Race/ethnicity. •Social class. Much depends on ego development: the ability to understand oneself and one's world to take charge in planning one's life course.

Characteristics of Teen Mothers

•Growing up fatherless •Being abused. •Exposure to parental divorce or separation, domestic violence and substance abuse. •A family member with mental illness or criminal behavior.

Antisocial behavior

•Tends to run in families. •May have a genetic base. •May include neurobiological deficits. •Is differentiated by "early onset" beginning before age 11 and "late onset" beginning after puberty.