1. Social Development
Adolescence

2. SELF-DEVELOPMENT Changes in Self-Concept
In early adolescence, self-statements often include contradictory descriptions (“but”).
Compared to school-age children, teens also place more emphasis on social virtues, such as being friendly, considerate, kind, and cooperative.

3. Changes in Self-Esteem
Several new dimensions are added to self-esteem including close friendship, romantic appeal, and job competence.
Except for temporary declines associated with school transition, self-esteem is on the rise for most adolescents.

4. Personality Development
Erikson
Identity versus Identity Confusion
“Who am I?”
Identity crisis
Temporary period of confusion and distress as adolescents experiment with alternatives before settling on values and goals. Common in complex societies.

5. ERIKSON’S THEORY Identity versus Identity Confusion
Positive resolution: satisfaction with personal identity
Identity
Well-organized conception of self made up of values, beliefs, and goals
Negative resolution: confusion about adult roles
Identity confusion
State in which adolescents appear shallow and directionless

6. Paths to Identity Identity status: Crisis vs. Commitment
Identity achievement
Commitment to self-chosen values and occupational goals
Moratorium
Exploring alternative values and goals
Identity foreclosure
Acceptance of values and goals from authority figures
Identity diffusion
No firm commitments to values and goals
Adolescents shift statuses.
Gender differences?

7. Influences on Identity Development
Personality
A flexible, open-minded approach to grappling with competing beliefs and values is important.
Family
When the family serves as a “secure base” from which teenagers can confidently move out into the wider world, identity development is enhanced.
Foreclosed teenagers have bonds with parents, but lack opportunities for healthy separation.
Diffused adolescents report the lowest levels of warm, open communication at home.

8. Influences on Identity Development
Peers
Close friends help young people explore options by providing emotional support, assistance, and role models of identity development.
School and Community
Classrooms that promote high-level thinking, extracurricular and community activities, and vocational training programs foster identity achievement.

9. Identity Status and Psychological Well-Being
Identity achieved or still exploring
High self-esteem, more abstract and critical thinking, greater similarity between ideal and real self, advanced in moral reasoning
Foreclosed individuals
Dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant
Long-term diffused
Fatalistic, passive, likely to use and abuse drugs

10. Family Relationships Parent-Child Relationships
Teenagers no longer bend as easily to parental authority.
Disagreements are harder to settle.
Parents give greater autonomy if
they are financially secure, invested in work, and content with marriage.
Less than 10 percent of families with adolescents have serious trouble.

11. PEER RELATIONS Teens average 18 nonschool hours per week with peers.
Adolescent Friendships
Psychological intimacy and loyalty
Usually alike in age, sex, ethnicity, social class, attitudes, values but less homogeneous than before

12. Cliques and Crowds Peer groups increasingly common during adolescence
5 to 7 adolescents who are close friends
Crowd
Large, loosely organized group of several cliques with similar norms
– A crowd grants identity in larger social structure.

13. Cliques and Crowds
As dating increases, boy and girl cliques come together
influence of clique declines
Dating relationships allow for intimate relationship practise at first
Clique allows for acquisition of new social skills and experimenting with values and roles.
Can require conformity and lead to lowered self-esteem

14. Attachment research: Focus has been on infant development, child peer relationships, adult intimacy, and parenting commitment
Research has not focused on teens, nor the sexuality component of relationships

15. Attachment Measurement in Teens
Adolescent AAI (Interview Narrative): How child parental experiences are organized: autonomous, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful (Corresponds to B, C, A, & D in infants)
Romantic Relationship Self Reports
Experiences in Close Relationships – R
Two subscales: Anxiety and Avoidance in Romantic Relationships
Attachment Behavior in Sexual Relationships
Security, Ambivalent, and Avoidant Subscales

16. Intercorrelation of sexual relationship measures
Intercorrelation of sexual relationship measures Szielasko, Symons, & Price, 2007
Ambivalent
r= -.67
Secure
r=.51
r= -.82
Avoidant
r= -.84
Insecure
(Amb + Avoid)
Secure

17. Sexual relationship subscales: Concurrent validation
Secure Styles:
*Prefer secure sexual
partners (.28)
*Do not prefer
ambivalent (-.24) nor
avoidant (-.27) partners
*Are neither romantically
anxious (-.31) nor
avoidant (-.31)
Ambivalent
Styles:
*Prefer avoidant sexual
partners (.40)
*Do not prefer
ambivalent (-.39) nor
secure (-.31) partners
*Are both romantically
anxious (.54) and
avoidant (.37)
Avoidant
Styles:
*Prefer ambivalent
(.24) and avoidant
(.30) sexual
partners
*Do not prefer secure
(-.28) partners
*Are romantically
avoidant (.38)

18. Sexual relationship styles and sexual approaches- M + F
Secure Ambivalent Avoidant
Condom Use
# Sexual Partners
Exp. Unwanted Sex
Exp. Verbal Coercion
Exp. Sexual Assault
Use Unwanted Sex
Use Verbal Coercion

19. Anti-Social Behaviour: Delinquency
Juvenile delinquents are minors who commit crimes or acts only illegal for minors.
These crimes account for 30 percent of police arrests.
Delinquency rises in early teenage years, remains high during middle adolescence, and declines into young adulthood.
Adolescents commit 27 percent of violent crimes and 42 percent of property crimes.

20. Factors Related to Delinquency
Much more common for boys than girls
Low-SES and minority youths more aggressively arrested, charged, and punished
Correlates
Difficult temperament
Low intelligence
Poor school performance
Peer rejection in childhood
Entry into antisocial peer groups

21. Developmental Path to Delinquency