Understanding Adolescents’ Cognitive Characteristics Using Piaget Cognitive Theory Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who focused on the study of cognitive development in human growth. From his studies, he developed the cognitive theory, which argues that there are four stages of human development (Greene, 2008). He identified these four stages as sensorimotor, pre-operational, and concrete operational, and the formal operational stage. The following study focuses on the operational stage to the protagonist as depicted by Starr Carter, an adolescent in novel ‘The Hate U Give’ as written by Angie Thomas. Piaget’s developmental theory will be helpful in identifying his cognitive characteristics at this stage.

Starr Carter is the sixteen-year-old protagonist girl in the ‘The Hate U Give’ where the author offers a first-person view of her character. Starr comes from the poor Garden Heights community but attends an affluent school in Riverton Hills. The schooling experience results in the split of her identity (Greene, 2008). She monitors her speech and behavior among her white peers, but she feels that she must represent her race because she is one of the only African American students at the school. Nonetheless, Starr remains to be a normal and typical teenager in some cases who loves basketball and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Moreover, she is fashion conscious as seen from her Tumblr blog and believes that parents are corny but she secretly admires them.

As earlier mentioned, Piaget proposed four stages in his cognitive development theory. The operational stage is the final stage and starts from age 12 to adulthood. At this stage, a person demonstrates an ability to analyze situations critically based on argument and abstract reasoning. For instance, a person may not realize that each action has consequences but may think that consequences are a result of failing to follow directions. The most important thing is that an individual begins to understand that consequences could lead to ethical and moral issues like dishonor, suspicion, and emotional instability (Shaffer & Kipp, 2014). Other characteristics include identity formation and concluding based on testing situations or forming a hypothesis. Egocentrism is also common during this stage because the individual begins to build opinions based on a whether it was right or wrong. Starr Carter offers numerous examples of some situations demonstrating the various characteristics of the operational stage.

At sixteen years, Starr is categorized under the formal operational...

This can be seen from her astute ability to draw conclusions based on testing situations. She is not only shaped and modeled by the environment around her, but she has become an integral component of her identity formation process. As seen from Piaget’s perspective, Starr is experiencing some social, biological, and cognitive transitions, which accompany the normative transition from childhood to adulthood (Greene, 2008). The cognitive development theory indicates that human beings are dynamic and can respond differently or show behaviors as their environment dictates. Some essential elements of growth involve historical, cultural, social, psychological and biological components, which are inter-twined through relationships between a person and the environment. Therefore, various factors such as socio-cultural, behavioral, personal, and biological are dynamically inter-linked. As a result, Starr is both an influencer and a product of her growth and development (Shaffer & Kipp, 2014).
Considering the tenets of the operational stage in Piaget’s Theory, Starr uses her critical thinking and abilities to influence her behavior and argumentative skills (Shaffer & Kipp, 2014). For instance, she feels that she is out of place because other students have judged her harshly. Although she is in her first romantic relationship, she is forced to hide her white boyfriend because her father’s reaction worries her. Nonetheless, she justifies he actions. For instance, she says, “I mean, anytime he finds out a black person is with a white person, suddenly something’s wrong with them.” She goes further to explain, “I don’t want him looking at me like that.” While at school, she fears sharing her part in the investigation because she thinks that one of her closest friends is not sympathetic to her situation.

Identity formation is an important characteristic of Piaget’s theory, which involves a person’s contribution to her or his sense of self (Greene, 2008). Piaget determines that identity achievement can resolve the identity crisis in cases where an adolescent must explore numerous possibilities before deciding to depict their preferred identity. During this stage, a person starts to define him/herself according to their group membership. In the novel, the process of identity formation makes Starr switch her personality more often because the circumstances are dynamic and she must depict an identity that makes her safe. For example, Starr’s father was a former…