PSYC 203
Developmental Psychology
Session 39: Young Adulthood
Plan for the coming sessions
• Cover middle adulthood and death and dying in class.
• Upload materials for older adulthood, please go over them
independently.
• Will upload materials for the final class early, so you have access to
them early.
• Also, will be uploading a set of practice questions.
When does one become an adult?
When does one become an adult?
In the legal sense…
Age of voting → 18 years
Age of marriage → 18 years for females, 21 years for males
Sociologically…
When people are self-supporting in terms of basic needs
When they have chosen a career
When they have married / started a family
When does one become an adult?
Psychologically…
When one has developed one’s identity
When one has developed a value system
When one has become independent of one’s parents
Internal indicators like sense of autonomy, self control, personal
responsibility
Young adulthood and emergent adulthood
Adulthood involves
• Accepting responsibility for oneself
• Making independent decisions
• Becoming financially independent…
Earlier categorization:
Young adulthood right after adolescence, ~20 to 40
New category:
Emergent adulthood: End of adolescence to late 20s
Established adulthood: 30s and 40s
Roadmap
• Transitions
• Physical development
• Cognitive development
• Moral reasoning development
• Social development
Transitions
From school to college, college to work, parental family to independent
living / own family…
Successful transitions from school to college
• Family support
• Adaptability and problem-solving skills
• Close and autonomous relationships with parents
• Strong network with peers and mentors
Transition
Successful transition to work settings
• Competence (in general and professional)
• Personal characteristics: Initiative, flexibility, purposefulness
• Positive personal relationships
• Links between schooling and employment
Quarter-life crisis
Anxiety and helplessness in the liminal period of making a transition
from a structured and comfortable life to one grounded in reality
Most likely between ages of 25 and 33 years
• Worries about the future
• Feeling powerless
• Feeling aimless or lacking in life objectives
• Anger at the situation
Roadmap
• Transitions
• Physical development
• Cognitive development
• Moral reasoning development
• Social development
Physical development
Physical development
• Healthy behaviours in young adulthood → foundational for lifelong
physical functioning
• Health issues mirror those of adolescence
• Injuries due to risky behaviour
• Concerns related to substance abuse
• Unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., not enough exercise, not enough sleep, irregular
meals, unbalanced diets)
• Largely related to sociocultural and contextual factors
Influences on health
Knowing about good and bad habits is not enough…
• Personality
• Emotions
• Social surroundings
Diet
• Healthy, balanced meals
associated with good health
outcomes
• Increase in snacking, availability
of fast foods, sedentary
recreational pursuits → obesity
• Obesity → depression, blood
pressure, heart disease, stroke,
arthritis, muscular and skeletal
disorders
Exercise
• Foundation for later years
• Lowers the risk of a range of
health issues later
Including heart disease, stroke,
diabetes, cancers, osteoporosis,
anxiety and depression…
• Doesn’t have to be intense to
yield health benefits
Sleep
Sleep deprivation is especially common in
emergent and young adulthood
• Affects health, cognitive functioning, social
functioning, emotional functioning
• More mistakes, more impatience, more
distractibility
• Impairs memory, higher level decision
making, speech articulation
• Chronic sleep deprivation → serious
consequences for cognitive performance
Social relationships
Social integration: Active engagement in a broad range of social
relationships, activities, and roles (friend, neighbour, colleague,
spouse…)
• Emotional wellbeing
• Engagement in healthful behaviours like exercising and eating well
• High social integration → lower mortality rate
Social relationships
Social support: Material, informational, and psychological resources
derived from one’s social network.
• People who get in touch with others in stressful situations →
• More likely to eat and sleep sensibly
• Get enough exercise
• Avoid substance abuse
• Less likely to be anxious and depressed
Social relationships
Vital for health and wellbeing
Relationships that offer systems for both social integration and social
support (e.g., marriage) are highly beneficial for health
Sexual and reproductive issues
• Emergent or young adulthood → often the time many individuals
become sexually active
• Fewer risky behaviours when individuals become sexually active in
emergent adulthood rather than adolescence
• Attitudes towards sex are both more casual and less judgmental at
this point, but a double standard with respect to men and women’s
sexual activity still exists.
Roadmap
• Transitions
• Physical development
• Cognitive development
• Moral reasoning development
• Social development
Neo-Piagetian thought
(Beyond formal operations)
Higher levels of reflective thinking:
Abstract reasoning involving active and
continuous evaluation of information
and beliefs; reconciling apparent
contradictions
Postformal thought: Combining logic
with emotion and practical experience
while solving ambiguous problems
Reflective thinking
“Active, persistent, and careful consideration” of information and
beliefs in the light of evidence – John Dewey
Question facts, draw inferences, make connections
Create complex intellectual systems that can reconcile seemingly
conflicting ideas
Reflective thinking
Capacity emerges between 20 -25 years
Related to brain development:
• Complete myelination of cortical regions of the brain
• Formation of new neurons, synapses, dendritic connections
All adults develop the capacity for reflective thinking, but few adults
become proficient, or practice it regularly
Post-formal thought
Ability to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, inconsistency, contradiction,
imperfection, and compromise
Relies on subjective experience and intuition (as well as logic)
Relativistic
Not just either/or reasoning, shades of gray
Post-formal thought
Shifting gears to think in terms of multiple logical systems, often going
back and forth
Problem definition in terms of categorizing and establishing boundaries
Process-product shift while looking for solutions
Pragmatism in choosing a solution in terms of criteria
Multiple solutions because problems have more than one cause, and
can be viewed from multiple perspectives
Awareness of paradox that can exist in solutions
Self-referential thinking or awareness of self in the problem space
Roadmap
• Transitions
• Physical development
• Cognitive development
• Moral reasoning development
• Social development
Moral reasoning
Kohlberg’s post-conventional stage (reasoning about moral situations
in terms of overarching / universal principles)
• Usually achieved in 20s (if then)
• Chiefly a function of experience
• Encountering conflicting values away from home
• Being responsible for the welfare of others
Cognitive development does not fully explain moral development…
Moral reasoning
Carol Gilligan’s theory of moral development
Initially proposed a gendered differentiation in moral reasoning
But later research showed few such differences
Ultimately, described moral reasoning in both men and women as
moving beyond abstract reasoning
• Greater tolerance for moral contradictions
• Role of experience
Roadmap
• Transitions
• Physical development
• Cognitive development
• Moral reasoning development
• Social development
Identity development
Emergent adulthood → Time of exploration
End of emergent adulthood → Consolidation of roles and beliefs into a
stable personality
Recentring (shifting to an adult personality):
• Stage 1: Embedded in family of origin, but expectations of self-
reliance
• Stage 2: Connected to, but not embedded in family of origin.
Temporary and exploratory involvements.
• Stage 3: Independence from family of origin; commitment to a career,
partner, children
Personality development
Normative – stage models: Adults follow a basic sequence of age-
related psychosocial changes
Timing of events model: Development depends on when certain
events occur in one’s life
Trait models: Examine stability and change in personality traits
Personality development:
Normative-stage models
Basic sequence of age-related psychosocial changes
Normative → Common to most members of the population
Stages → Emerge in successive periods
E.g., Erikson’s Intimacy vs. Isolation as the task characterizing young
adulthood
Personality development:
Normative-stage models
Levinson’s investigation of life structure (the underlying pattern or
design of a person’s life at any given time)
Ages 17-33, a man builds a first provisional life structure:
• Leaves parents’ home
• Becomes educated or otherwise skilled
• Becomes financially and emotionally independent
• Chooses an occupation, gets married
• Dreams about the future
Timing of events model
Holds that the course of development depends on when certain
commonly expected events happen in one’s life (like marriage,
parenthood, etc.)
• Development proceeds smoothly if these events occur at times that
are normative within a culture
• Stress can occur if they don’t
Important for challenging the idea of universal, age-related change
But less applicable in times and cultures where these developmental
timing norms are not widespread
Trait Models
Examine stability or change in personality traits
• E.g., The Five Factor Model (Openness to experience,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism)
• Considerable continuity as well as change in all five domains from
adolescence till age 30; slower change after 30
• Increase in agreeableness and conscientiousness
• Decrease in neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience
Social development
• Intimate relationships, including friendships and significant other
• Marital relationships
• Parenthood
Next time…
• Middle adulthood
• Death and dying
