Adolescent Development

Moral Development in Children vs. Adults

  • 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.