Adulthood the Transition Between Adolescence

Adulthood

The transition between adolescence and adulthood is often marked with turmoil. Suddenly faced with the looming realities of the real world such as needing to make ends meet, the teen named Jean surveys her prospects and realizes with a sharp blow that living for free at home will no longer be possible. She panics at the thought of having to pick a major at college. Although she has worked for several years, she has never had to earn a living until now.

Concurrent with the shock of growing up is a radical shift in values, interests, and beliefs. The clothes and social activities Jean once felt were cool are no longer interesting. She used to play piano and now only wants to play electric guitar. The books she reads, the television shows she watches, and the sports she plays all take on new meaning for her.

Selfishness and self-centeredness remains but gradually changes into an increased focus on service, career, and romantic love. The shift from adolescence to adulthood is not a sudden sharp shift but a staged series of developmental phases. One day she wakes up with a new idea or ambition that seems silly the next. This is a period of intense self-reflection and introspection that accompany moral maturation.

A sense of ethical responsibility and moral convictions begin to emerge. The teen feels drawn to groups and organizations that embody his or her ethic or worldview. With a zeal bordering on fanaticism, Jean might suddenly decide to become a vegetarian or enroll in a volunteer program in a developing nation. She is influenced by her friends but not as much as she once was. Now she listens to her friends' points-of-view but can still cling to what she believes in at the core of herself.

What the text calls the "possible self" begins to emerge with stronger details and a greater sense of purpose. Jean instantly understood the concept of possible self and explained how she poignantly felt what she describes as a rebirth. During the teen years, getting noticed was important to Jean: being popular in school, having a good reputation, being attractive physically. Getting good grades and excelling in school were important too, but more so to please authority figures than to gain any sort of personal satisfaction -- or so it seemed to her then. She now realizes that excelling in school was a part of who she is and will become a valuable stepping stone towards a future career and more adventurous short-term goals.

The factors influencing "possible self" development are largely social in nature and influenced by peer pressures and the imagery in popular media. In fact, Jean admits to drawing upon multiple cues from his or her social life and environment to help form and frame the self that is emerging. She reads magazines about celebrities embarrassedly but understands that through the lives of those rich and famous, Jean and teens like her filter out and find aspects of themselves.

Self-concept remains somewhat stable as we age, Jean claims. She feels like her core personality is much like it was when she was six years old. However, superficial changes to self-concept have taken place. Those superficial changes are like circles revolving around a stable center. Flashes of inspiration or whims will help the individual initiate changes. Jean says that only sometimes does she act on the ideas that pop up into her head. At the center of Jean is a core node of beliefs about the self and a personality that remained relatively continuous since early childhood. The teen might be more or less ambitious, more or less outgoing than during childhood but in general self-perception has not yet changed appreciably.

Conclusion: Analysis and Evaluation of Lifespan Development Issue

The environment in which Jean was raised in had the strongest impact on Jean's developmental path. Social psychologists and cognitive psychologists testify to the role of environment in forging the developmental path. Interactions with peers are one way a person creates or enhances a self-concept. How Jean reacted to social strife or conflict in her environment predicted her reactions to future situations. In addition to her interactions with peers, culture has an enormous impact on Jean's development. Jean has soaked up her self-concept partly from the media but also from peer and parental influences. Jean's parents provided her with a foundation set of values, beliefs, and methods of ethical reasoning.

Several social psychological theories apply to developmental psychology. Social identity theory, observational learning, attribution theory, and the theory of social schemas can all help explain Jean's unique developmental path. Although not overly impacted by the theories of social identity, Jean noted shifting her social affiliations frequently throughout her adolescence. One of the features she notices emerging in herself is less of a tendency to create in-group boundaries. At the same time, Jean notices that social cliques exert a powerful influence not just on her but on all her friends, who struggle to define themselves according to what group they belong to and what social associations they cultivate. Many of those group associations are based on ethnicity, class, and in some cases religion.

Bandura's theory of social learning qualifies Jean's path of development throughout adolescence and as she makes the leap into adulthood. Research has proven the role of observational learning in shaping social behavior (Huitt 2004). Just as young children can pick up cues from their environment and model their behavior after peers, so too can older children, adolescents, and young adults like Jean base their behaviors on what they observe. Observational learning seems to negate a strong sense of self and would appear to suggest that Jean is not internally motivated. However, social and observational learning do not preclude an internal compass. Jean retains a strong sense of self and readily acknowledges the language, mannerisms, and behaviors that she developed because of environmental cues.