PSY465 exam 3

Work, leisure, & adolescent development: 10/3 & 10/8

Part-time jobs:

• Many US students will have worked before graduating

• Younger adols hold informal jobs (babysitting, yard work); older adols hold more formal jobs (retail sales, restaurant work)

• With some exceptions, most adols’ jobs are repetitive, monotonous, intellectual unchanging

• PT jobs & learning to be responsible: little research supports the popular view that holding a job makes adols more responsible

• Effects of employment on school outcomes depend on how many hrs/wk they work: 

  • Working < 20 hrs/wk: not found to have negative effect

  • Working long hours: found to interfere w school (associated w increases in aggression, school misconduct, precocious sexual activity, minor delinquency, substance use)

• Impacts depend on the job: working at a job that involves learning new skills & challenging tasks is related to greater WB & self-esteem

Extracurricular activities: 

• Structure & supervision: 

  • Structured & supervised: extracurricular activities

  • Unstructured & unsupervised: socializing w friends without an organized activity in mind

• 85% if US HS students participate in 1+ EC activities

• Positive effects: improves school performance; deters delinquency, drug use, other types of risk taking; enhances emotional WB; increased likelihood of college enrollment

• Involvement in team sports: associated with an increased substance use or problem B

• EC activities: may increase students’ contact w teachers; may improve self-confidence & self-esteem; may strengthen adol connection to their school

• EC activities as a protective factor: positive influences that reduce neg effects from adversity… after school EC activities can be a protective factor that reduces exposure to DV at home; can decrease risks of depression & anxiety (related to DV exposure)

Unstructured activities: 

• Unstructured, unsupervised time with peers: associated with depression, delinquency, substance use, violence, precious sexual activity

• Unstructured, unsupervised activities after school: effects depend on after-school arrangements; adols who go straight home or are monitored from a distance less likely to engage in problem B

• Unstructured activities combined w other risk factors: combo of lacking supervision, having friends who use drugs, and being susceptible to peer pressure

• → on average, EC activities are more likely to have positive effects on adols, whereas unstructured/unsupervised time with peers are more likely to have negative effects on adols

Promoting positive youth development: 

• Positive youth dev programs: after-school programs; focused on helping adols develop strengths

• Strength based: 5C’s… competence, confidence, connection, character, caring/compassion

• Effects of positive youth dev programs: small but significant improvements in academic achievement & emotional WB; may not reduce rates of problem B

• Keys to program success: extent to which adols voluntarily take on roles & obligations; stick with their job even in the face of challenges; persevere & derive a sense of accomplishment from success

Prevalence & amount of use:

• Adols frequently use media; increased time spent using media over the last decade

• Research: effects depend on many factors & may be small

  • Excessive screen time can interfere with sleep & physical activity

Theories of media influence & use: 

• Cultivation theory: exposure to media content affects adols

• Uses & gratifications approach: people play an active role in selecting the media to which they are exposed

• Media practice model: adols’ preferences & their media exposure influence each other

Exposure to violent media content:

• Through watching TV & movies, listening to music, playing video games, exposed to violence

• May lead to increased aggression towards peers; may influence attitudes towards violence… but effects are small

• Exposure to violent content on TV is linked with increased aggression in children & adols

Social media:

• Effects: has affected the way adols socialize; concerns about the harmful effects of social media on adol MH & development

• Neg effects are not consistently found – depends on the specific details surrounding its use

• Pos – ease of connecting with friends; neg – cyberbullying 

• Use of social media for social comparison & feedback-seeking: 

  • Researchers examined longitudinal associations between depressive symptoms & technology-based social comparison among adols

  • Higher depressive symptoms → more frequent use of social media for comparison purposes → increases in anxiety & depression

• Effects depend on social support: among those without much peer support, social media use is associated with poorer self-concepts

Problematic media use: 

• Internet addiction or compulsive internet use: 

  • Salience: being online is the most important thing in life

  • Mood change: mood fluctuations as a function of internet experiences

  • Tolerance: needing more & more internet time to feel satisfied

  • Withdrawal: experiencing neg feelings when prevented from being online

  • Conflict: internet use has caused problems in one’s relationships/other life aspects

• Internet addiction: compulsive online activity is associated with a wide range of MH problems & negative outcomes; hard to disentangle cause/effect

Identity: 10/10 & 10/15

Identity: 

• Identity & adol: issues of identity become more important; identity dev is a set of interrelated developments

• Self-conception: traits & attributes that individuals use to describe themselves

• Self-esteem: how pos or ged individuals feel about themselves

• Sense of identity: extent to which individuals feel secure about who they are & are becoming

Changes in self-conception: 

• Cognitive transitions & self-concept dev: increased abstract thinking; increased ability to process large amounts of into

• Self-concepts become more differentiated: 

  • Link traits & attributes describing themselves to specific situations

  • Start to differentiate between their concept of themselves & how others may view them

• Self-concepts become more organized & integrated: increased I + O of different aspects of their self-concept into a more logical, coherent whole

• Real & possible self: adols become able to distinguish between their actual & ideal selves; imagine their possible selves (ideal, feared self)

• Sources used to build a self-concept: 

  • Direct appraisals: derived from our own reactions to past events & experiences

  • Reflected appraisal: result form our beliefs about how we are  seen by others

• Social self-concept (‘looking glass self’):

  • One’s perceptions of how others perceive them

• Self-concept dev: adols are aware of & concerned with others (especially peers) opinions of them

Changes in self-esteem: 

• Self-esteem does NOT plunge during adol as previously thought

• Compared to older adols, early & middle adols have lower self-esteem

• Self-esteem fluctuates from day to day, particularly during adol

• Reasons for fluctuations in self-esteem: 

  • Increased awareness of others’ reactions to their B

  • Increased interest in their peers’ opinions of them

  • Increased social cognitive skills

• Domain-specific self-esteem: adols evaluate themselves differently across domains; self-esteem in these domains contributes to overall self-esteem… romantic appeal increases the most

• Sex differences in self-esteem: girls… 

  • During early adol: self-esteem is often lower than boys’ self-esteem

  • Girls are more self-conscious & fluctuate more in their self-esteem

  • Tend to be more concerned than boys about their physical appearance & peer acceptance

• Self-esteem & emotional WB: 

  • Lower self-esteem increases risk for depression

  • Low self-esteem → failure to seek social support → loneliness → low s-e (it’s a cycle)

Self-conception development & the brain: 

• Important brain region for self-referential processing: medial PFC ( mPFC)

• Neural correlates of self-knowledge retrieval: 

  • fMRI study compared young adols & adults on a task of self v social knowledge retrieval

  • While in the scanner, participants judged whether phrases described either themselves (self condition) or a familiar other (social condition)

  • → Adols activated dorsal mPFFC more than adults; adults activated the lateral temporal cortex more than adols

  • Adols may rely more on effortful or deliberate self-reflective processing (requiring the mPFC) compared to adults

  • Adults may use stored self-knowledge when performing the task more than adols

Identity: multifaceted construct that encompasses vocational/career, religious, cultural/ethnic, political, sexual identities

The adolescent identity crisis: 

• Erikson’s theory → identity formation is the main ‘crisis’ or developmental task of adol

• Psychosocial moratorium: Erikson believed that having a period of self-discovery was important to identity formation; a period of experimentation with different roles & identities

• Identity confusion: adols who won’t successfully resolve the identity crisis

Identity statuses: 

• Diffusion: the individual doesn’t have firm commitments & isn’t currently trying to make them; not exploring options in terms of identity

• Foreclosure: committing to an identity without a period of exploration; roles often revolve around goals set by parents/other authority figures

• Moratorium: period of exploration; actively trying out different identities; have not yet committed to an identity

• Achievement: a strong sense of identity individual has gone through a period of exploration & made a commitment

• Identity development across the lifespan: 

  • Identity development & emerging adulthood: establishing a coherent sense of identity takes time; it’s generally not established before 18 years old

  • Individuals may continue to refine their identities over their lifetimes & shift between identity status categories → earliest a coherent sense of overall identity usually emerges is late adol

Racial & ethnic identity: 

• Sense of membership in a racial/ethnic group (& the attitudes and feelings related to that membership)

• Bicultural identity: 

  • Bicultural identity: identity formation that occurs when adols identify in some ways with their ethnic group & in other ways with the majority culture

  • Ethnic minority groups navigate maintaining their racial/ethnic identities while also being part of the majority culture

• Process of racial & ethnic identity development: precipitative event → period of exploration of racial/ethnic heritage → coherent sense of identity that includes racial/ethnic identity

• Positive r/e identity: associated with better MH, higher self-esteem, academic achievement

• Environmental influences on racial/ethnic identity development: 

  • Racial/ethnic composition of contexts: school, peer groups, contact with other adols with the same & different backgrounds

  • Racial/ethnic socialization in families: focuses on understanding & valuing one’s culture, dealing with racism, and succeeding in society

  • Discrimination: a central feature in the development of racial/ethnic minority children & adols; has an array of negative effects

• Multidimensional model of racial/ethnic identity: discrimination & r/e identity

  • Racial/ethnic centrality: how important r/e is in defining identity

  • Private regard: how individuals feel about being a member of their race/ethnicity

  • Public regard: how individuals think others feel about their race/ethnicity

• Discrimination & protective factors: 

  • Effects on MH depend to some extent on racial/ethnic identity

  • A strong positive sense of racial/ethnic identity (can gain this from mentor, family) can protect against the negative effects of prejudice and discrimination

Autonomy development: 10/17

Autonomy & adolescence:

• Autonomy: the quality of being independent & self-sufficient, capable of thinking for oneself

• Increased capability & desire for independence; increased demands for more responsible behavior & self-reliance

• Emotional autonomy: establishing more adult-like and less child-like close relationships with family members & peers

• Behavioral autonomy: the capacity to make independent decisions

Autonomy & the parent-adolescent relationship:

• Psychoanalytic theory – detachment: process through which adolescents ‘sever’ emotional attachments to their parents; thought to involve high levels of conflict

• Individuation: gradual increases in one’s sense of self as autonomous & separate from one’s parents; doesn’t necessarily involve high levels of stress or turmoil

• Autonomy & relationships:

  • Developing emotional autonomy from parents is demonstrated in different ways; adolescents are less emotionally dependent on their parents than children

  • Parents & adols may disagree about how independent an adol can be & what they’re allowed to do on their own

• Adols who develop autonomy & maintain closeness with their parents are psych healthier

• Parenting & autonomy development: authoritative parenting supports autonomy dev in adols

• Over-controlling parenting & adol autonomy: high parental psych control disrupts autonomy development

• Bidirectional associations between parental autonomy support and adol emotional & behavioral health

Independent decision making: 

• Improved decision making skills → increased capacity for competent independent B

• Improved self-control & impulse control skills + decreased influence of potential immediate rewards = improved decision making

• Independent decision making & reward sensitivity: 

  • Young adols are much more drawn to the potential rewards than the potential costs

  • Over time, the influence of potential immediate rewards on decision making decreases

• Development of self-regulation & impulse control during adol is linked to increased decision making skills

Independent decision making in the peer context: 

• Increased ability to make decisions that differ from those of their peers

• Susceptibility to peer influence is greater during the first half of adol than later; young adols conform more to peers (most influence from peers from 12-14)

  • Why? Heightened orientation to peers; being around other adols activates brain regions associated with rewards

• Susceptibility to peer influence: 

  • Adols of the same age vary in how susceptible they are to peer influence

  • Adols who have low self-esteem or high social anxiety are more likely to conform

  • High susceptibility to peer influence → more likely to use substances with peers

Sebastian et al. (2008):

Differences in brain activity in adolescents vs. adults during self-concept tasks:

• When adolescents reflect on the self, the dorsal MPFC area of the brain is more activated. Whereas, in adults, the lateral temporal cortex and parts of the right superior temporal sulcus are more activated when reflecting on the self. These findings indicate that adults tend to rely more on previously stored information, which is stored in the lateral temporal cortex. However, adolescents tend to use more current (and less stored or encoded) information when making self-reflections, as this is indicated by the MPFC area being more activated during this task. These findings imply that the development of the self-concept from adolescence to adulthood is largely formed by changing and differing neurocognitive skills which people use when performing self-reflection tasks. A second possibility for these differences is that there are neuroanatomical changes that take place during adolescence which are responsible for shifted brain activation patterns.

Looking glass self (i.e., social self-concept) & reflected appraisals of the self:

• Direct appraisals of the self are based on our responses to previous events and experiences, which make up the idea of what we are like and who we believe we are (Sebastian et al., 2008). Reflected self-appraisals are formed from our perceptions of how others view or perceive us. The ‘looking glass self’ is also referred to as the reflected self-appraisal as this encompasses the idea of a looking glass – where part of our identity is based in a reflection of how we believe others perceive us. Increased perspective-taking skills contribute to the development of the looking glass self during adolescence by allowing us to place ourselves in others' shoes, or to have a better idea of others’ perspectives, and this allows us to think about how we are perceived. Furthermore, early-adolescents are more able to compare themselves to others and they have a better understanding of when others make assumptions and comparisons about them. Similarly, adolescents are more affected by others’ judgements as they attach more importance to them, and this leads to a stronger emphasis on the effects of the looking glass self and how this influences their self-concept.