Socioemotional Development in Early Adulthood

Stability and Change

• For adults, socioemotional development revolves around adaptively integrating our emotional experiences into enjoyable relationships with others.

• Research shows that the first 20 years of life are meaningful in predicting an adult’s socioemotional well-being.

  • Experiences in early adulthood are also important in determining what the individual will be like later in adulthood.

• Changes in socioemotional characteristics are less noticable when the time between measurements is short.

  • Measures of self-esteem between the ages of 25 and 30 will seem stable

  • Measures of self-esteem between the ages of 15 and 30 might show a more noticeable difference.

Temperament

• Temperament is an individual’s behavioral style and characteristic emotional responses.

• In early adulthood, people tend to have fewer emotional mood swings than they did in adolescence.

  • They become more responsible and engage in less risk-taking behaviors

• Childhood temperament is believed to be linked to adult personality.

  • E.g., children who were highly active at age 4 were likely to be very outgoing at age 23

Personality and Temperament in Research

• Easy and difficult temperament

  • Children who has an easy temperament at 3 to 5 years were well adjusted young adults. Those with difficult temperament at 3-5 were not well adjusted in emerging adulthood.

• Inhibition

  • Infants with higher inhibition at 14 months become more reserved and introverts adults with lower social functioning at age 26

    • Increased trajectory of shyness was linked to social anxiety, mood disorders, and substance use in adulthood.

• Emotional regulation

  • High emotionality at age 6 is associated with depression in emerging adulthood. Emotion dysregulation in 5th graders was linked to having violent behavioral responses at 22 years of age.

Attachment

• Like temperament, attachment appears during infancy and plays an important part in socioemotional development

• Although relationships with romantic partners and friends differ from those with parents, research has shown that adult attachment patterns reflect childhood and adolescent attachment

  • Infants whoa re securely attached at 1 year of age were securely attached 20 years later in their adult relationships

  • They were more stable in romantic relationships and reported stronger bonds with friends

Adult Attachment Styles

Relationship Development

• Close relationships are those that are important, interdependent, and long lasting

  • Familial relationships

  • Friendships

  • Work relationships

  • Romantic relationships

• These relationships can produce intense feelings that are both:

  • Positive - passion, caring, concern

  • Negative - rage, jealousy, despair

• This is referred to as the paradox of close relationships

First Impressions

• Three factors underlie initial attraction between strangers:

  • Proximity - people are more likely to become involved with those that are geographically close

  • Familiarity - positive feelings toward a person are increased the more often we see them

  • Physical attractiveness - people are more likley to interact with those they deem attractive

    • This is the least important factor, and recent research shows it is often over ranked by kindness, humor, and intelligence.

Building a Relationship

• there are 2 factors that affect the viability of relationships:

  • Reciprocal liking - liking those who show they like you

  • Similarity - we are drawn to those with similar qualities, values, interests.

• Once a relationship has been established, it requires active maintenance to sustain the desired quality of the relationship

Triangular Theory of Love

• This theory states that all loving relationships are comprised of some combination of 3 components:

  • Intimacy - warmth, closeness, and sharing private thoughts/feelings

  • Passion - intense feelings (positive and negative), including sexual desire

  • Commitment - the decision and intent to maintain a relationship in spite of difficulties and costs that may arise

• There are 8 types of relationships that can result from the presence, or absence, of each of the 3 components

Falling Out of Love: Why relationships end

• Premature commitment

• Ineffective communication and conflict management skills

• Becoming bored with the relationship

• Availability of a more attractive relationship

• Low levels of satisfaction

Friendship

• Friendships play an important role in development throughout the life span

• Most people in the US report having a best friend

  • 92% of women and 88% of men have a best friend of the same sex

• Many friendships are long-lasting (may even surpass romantic relationships).

  • 65% of US adults report knowing their best friend for at least 10 years

  • Only 15% have known them for less than 5 years

Erickson’s view of the self

• Erickson’s 6th psychosocial stage of development is intimacy vs isolation

  • Occurs in ages 21-40 years

  • Individual attempts to find the virtue of love

    • They seek to establish intimacy and relationships with others

    • Romantic and platonic relationships (friendships) are equally important

  • If a person fails to develop intimate relationships in early adulthood, isolation occurs

    • In this case, isolation represents low social functioning, not just a preference for solitude.

Adult Lifestyles

• Adults today may choose many different lifestyles and form many different types of families.

• They live alone, cohabit, marry, divorce, and remarry partners of the same or opposite sex.

  • Sing adults

  • Cohabitating adults

  • Marries adults

  • Divorces adults

  • Remarries adults

  • LGBTQ+ adults

Single Adults

• In 2021, 48.2% of those 18+ were single in the US (compared to 28% in 1970).

  • Common challenges include forming intimate relationships with other adults, confronting loneliness, and finding a niche society that is marriage-oriented

  • Advantages include having time to make decisions about one’s life, time to develop personal resources to meet goals, freedom to make autonomous decisions, pursuing one’s own schedule and interests, opportunities to explore new places and try new things, and privacy

Cohabitating Adults

• Cohabitating refers to living together in a sexual relationship without being marries

  • Common challenges include disapproval by parents and other family members placing an emotional strain on the couple, difficulty purchasing and owning property jointly

  • Advantages include getting to know the partner in a neutral.shares environment without a legally binding contract (marriage) and sharing expenses without fully sharing finances

Marries, Divorced, & Remarries

• In 2021, 51.8% of adults in the US were marries (compared to 72% in 1960).

  • The average age for a first marriage is 30.4 years for men and 28.6 years for women

• The divorce rate in the US is around 42%

  • First marriages -35-50%

  • Second marriages - 60-70%

  • Third marriages - 73%

• Men remarry after a divorce sooner than women do

• The increase in cohabitation in recent years may have caused a decline in remarriage rates

LGBTQ+ Adults

• Research shows that gay and lesbian adult relationships are very similar to heterosexual ones in levels of satisfaction and conflicts

• Contrary to common misconceptions, research suggests:

  • Masculine/feminine roles are relatively uncommon

  • Only a small segment of the gay male population has a large number of sexual partners, and it is even less common among lesbians

  • Both prefer long-term, committed relationships in adulthood

• Not much research has focused on bisexual, pansexual, or asexual relationships