Children (ages 3-7/8) tend to view someone who isn't tempted to do something wrong as more moral than someone who is tempted but resists.
Adults tend to view someone who is tempted but resists as more moral because they value the struggle to overcome temptation.
Adolescent Development
Adolescent development includes social, cognitive, and emotional development.
Adolescence is a critical period for development, marked by risky decisions and behaviors.
Evolutionary Perspective on Adolescence
Purpose of adolescence: Separating from caregivers and beginning to be interested in reproduction and finding a mate.
Humans are not the only ones who have adolescents; rats, chimpanzees, and fish also do.
Dispersal: Leaving the territory defined by parents/caregivers and finding new territory; this often happens at puberty in many species.
Risk tolerance is essential during adolescence for survival and reproductive advantages.
Willingness to take risks can be adaptive for individuals.
Puberty and Risk Tolerance
Puberty: The process of body changes that transition a person from a child-like state in which they are unable to reproduce to being a reproductively mature adult.
Puberty involves the ability to produce gametes (eggs or sperm) and engage in sexual/romantic behaviors.
Hormonal Processes in Puberty
Two hormonal processes regulated by the hypothalamus:
Turning on the adrenal glands.
Adrenal glands produce hormones, such as DHEA.
Happens early, around age 6 or 7.
Responsible for early pubertal changes like changes in body odor.
Turning on the gonads (testes or ovaries).
In males, testes produce testosterone, leading to increased body size, muscle mass, facial hair, and voice lowering. Male testosterone levels increase by a factor of 10 during adolescence.
In females, ovaries produce estrogens (estradiol), related to the menstrual cycle and breast development. Estrogen also changes body composition, leading to higher body fat.
Testosterone is necessary for women and normal sexual function. Testosterone levels double in women during adolescence.
Men also have estrogen, which is necessary for testosterone to function normally.
Testosterone and estrogen affect the limbic system, which responds to emotions and rewards.
Testosterone seems to be important for how salient rewards seem. Rewards from risk-taking behaviors become more obvious as testosterone levels increase.
Individual Differences in Puberty
The average age for girls to get their first period is around 12.
Girls who experience puberty early are at elevated risk for anxiety and depression.
Boys generally go through puberty later than girls, by about a year on average.
Being "off time" (much earlier or much later than peers) seems to be the most psychologically vulnerable experience for boys.
Historical Trends in Puberty
The age at which kids go through puberty is decreasing over historical time.
Possible explanations:
Better nutrition leading to more body fat, signaling to the brain that it's time to go through puberty.
Exposure to artificial light, which affects hormones that communicate with hormones signaling puberty.
Exposure to BPA (found in clear plastic water bottles), which mimics the effects of estrogen.
Maturing Out of Adolescence
Intertemporal Choice
Intertemporal choice: The ability to delay rewards. This matures as one goes from adolescence to adulthood.
Adults are better able to wait for rewards, while adolescents greatly prefer immediate rewards, even if they are smaller. Adolescents discount the future.
Personality Development
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is the tendency to feel anxious, stressed, or moody.
Females experience a rapid rise in neuroticism during adolescence (ages 10 to 15-17) and then a slow decline. Males are most anxious at age 10 and become less so over the lifespan.
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is associated with inhibiting impulses, planning, thinking before acting, and thinking about the future.
Conscientiousness is associated with the frontal lobe.
There is a rapid decline in conscientiousness from ages 10 to 13-14; teenagers are least conscientious at this time. Then, there is a rapid rise in conscientiousness in the late teenage years, associated with the growth of the frontal lobes.
Social pressures also cause conscientiousness to increase.
Cross-cultural studies show that in countries where adult milestones occur earlier, the increase in conscientiousness happens earlier.
Rights and Responsibilities
Society grants teenagers progressively more rights and responsibilities associated with being an adult.
Conflicting intuitions about when people should be allowed to take on certain rights and responsibilities.
The legal framework is a disorganized patchwork.
Legal Responsibility
Psychological science has been influential in thinking through the question of legal responsibility.
How old should someone be before they are held legally responsible for a crime?
The capacity to think about moral reasoning matures at a different rate than the capacity to control angry impulses.