RC 212: DEVELO[MENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

WEEK 10: Adolescence (Psychosocial Development)

Psychosocial Development
Identity Development

Identity development is a stage in the adolescent life cycle. For most, the search for identity begins in the
adolescent years. During these years, adolescents are more open to ‘trying on’ different behaviors and
appearances to discover who they are. In an attempt to find their identity and discover who they are,
adolescents are likely to cycle through a number of identities to find one that suits them best. Developing
and maintaining identity (in adolescent years) is a difficult task due to multiple factors such as family life,
environment, and social status.

Self-Concept

Two main aspects of identity development are self-concept and self-esteem. The idea of self-concept is
known as the ability of a person to have opinions and beliefs that are defined confidently, consistently and
with stability. Early in adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, greater
awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to think about abstract, future
possibilities, and the ability to consider multiple possibilities at once. As a result, adolescents experience a
significant shift from the simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions typical of young children; as children
they defined themselves by physical traits whereas adolescents define themselves based on their values,
thoughts, and opinions.

Self-Esteem

Another aspect of identity formation is self-esteem. Self-esteem is defined as one’s thoughts and feelings
about one’s self-concept and identity. Girls are most likely to enjoy high self-esteem when engaged in
supportive relationships with friends, the most important function of friendship to them is having someone
who can provide social and moral support. When they fail to win friends’ approval or can’t find someone
with whom to share common activities and common interests, in these cases, girls suffer from low self-
esteem. In contrast, boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and
defining their relation to authority. As such, they are more likely to derive high self-esteem from their ability
to successfully influence their friends; on the other hand, the lack of romantic competence, for example,
failure to win or maintain the affection of the opposite or same-sex (depending on sexual orientation), is the
major contributor to low self-esteem in adolescent boys.

Identity Formation: Who am I?

Adolescents continue to refine their sense of self as they relate to others. Erik Erikson referred to life’s fifth
psychosocial task as one of identity versus role confusion when adolescents must work through the
complexities of finding one’s own identity. Individuals are influenced by how they resolved all of the
previous childhood psychosocial crises and this adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the
future, between childhood and adulthood. Thus, in Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s main questions are
“Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of
successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of
not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). This crisis is resolved positively with identity
achievement and the gain of fidelity (ability to be faithful) as a new virtue, when adolescents have
reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture. Some adolescents adopt the values and
roles that their parents expect for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents
but align with a peer group. This is common as peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’
lives.

Expanding on Erikson’s theory, Marcia (1966) [1]) described identify formation during adolescence as
involving both decision points and commitments with respect to ideologies (e.g., religion, politics) and
occupations. Foreclosure occurs when an individual commits to an identity without exploring
options. Identity confusion/diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to any
identities. Moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made
commitments. As mentioned earlier, individuals who have explored different options, discovered their
purpose, and have made identity commitments are in a state of identity achievement.

Developmental psychologists have researched several different areas of identity development and some of
the main areas include:

 Religious identity: The religious views of teens are often similar to those of their families (Kim-
Spoon, Longo, & McCullough, 2012) Most teens may question specific customs, practices, or ideas
in the faith of their parents, but few completely reject the religion of their families.
 Political identity: An adolescent’s political identity is also influenced by their parents’
political beliefs. Although adolescents do tend to be more liberal than their elders, especially on
social issues, like other aspects of identity formation, adolescents’ interest in politics is predicted by
their parents’ involvement and by current events (Stattin et al., 2017).
 Vocational identity: While adolescents in earlier generations envisioned themselves as working in
a particular job, and often worked as an apprentice or part-time in such occupations as teenagers,
this is rarely the case today. Vocational identity takes longer to develop, as most of today’s
occupations require specific skills and knowledge that will require additional education or are
acquired on the job itself. In addition, many of the jobs held by teens are not in occupations that
most teens will seek as adults.
 Ethnic identity: Ethnic identity refers to how people come to terms with who they are based on their
ethnic or racial ancestry. For many ethnic minority teens, discovering one’s ethnic identity is an
important part of identity formation.
 Gender identity: A person’s sex, as determined by his or her biology, does not always correspond
with his or her gender. Sex refers to the biological differences between males and females, such
as the genitalia and genetic differences. Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of
women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships between groups of women and
men. Many adolescents use their analytic, hypothetical thinking to question traditional gender roles
 and expression. If their genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender identity, they
may refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming.
o Gender identity refers to a person’s self-perception as male, female, both, genderqueer,
or neither. Cisgender is an umbrella term used to describe people whose sense of
personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex, while transgender is a term
used to describe people whose sense of personal identity does not correspond with their
birth sex. Gender expression, or how one demonstrates gender (based on traditional
gender role norms related to clothing, behavior, and interactions) can be feminine,
masculine, androgynous, or somewhere along a spectrum.
o Fluidity and uncertainty regarding sex and gender are especially common during early
adolescence, when hormones increase and fluctuate creating difficulty of self-acceptance
and identity achievement (Reisner et al., 2016).

Social Changes

Parents
It appears that most teens do not experience adolescent “storm and stress” to the degree once famously
suggested by G. Stanley Hall, a pioneer in the study of adolescent development. Only small numbers of
teens have major conflicts with their parents (Steinberg & Morris, 2001), and most disagreements are
minor.

As adolescents work to form their identities, they pull away from their parents, and the peer group becomes
very important (Shanahan, McHale, Osgood, & Crouter, 2007). Despite spending less time with their
parents, most teens report positive feelings toward them (Moore, Guzman, Hair, Lippman, & Garrett, 2004).
Warm and healthy parent-child relationships have been associated with positive child outcomes, such as
better grades and fewer school behavior problems, in the United States as well as in other countries (Hair
et al., 2005).

Although peers take on greater importance during adolescence, family relationships remain important too.
One of the key changes during adolescence involves a renegotiation of parent–child relationships. As
adolescents strive for more independence and autonomy during this time, different aspects of parenting
become more salient.
Peers

As children become adolescents, they usually begin spending more time with their peers and less time with
their families, and these peer interactions are increasingly unsupervised by adults. Children’s notions of
friendship often focus on shared activities, whereas adolescents’ notions of friendship increasingly focus on
intimate exchanges of thoughts and feelings.

During adolescence, peer groups evolve from primarily single-sex to mixed-sex. Adolescents within a peer
group tend to be similar to one another in behavior and attitudes, which has been explained as being a
function of homophily (adolescents who are similar to one another choose to spend time together in a
“birds of a feather flock together” way) and influence (adolescents who spend time together shape each
other’s behavior and attitudes). Peer pressure is usually depicted as peers pushing a teenager to do
something that adults disapprove of, such as breaking laws or using drugs. One of the most widely studied
aspects of adolescent peer influence is known as deviant peer contagion (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011)[3],
which is the process by which peers reinforce problem behavior by laughing or showing other signs of
approval that then increase the likelihood of future problem behavior. Although deviant peer contagion is
more extreme, regular peer pressure is not always harmful. Peers can serve both positive and negative
functions during adolescence.

Crowds are an emerging level of peer relationships in adolescence. In contrast to friendships (which are
reciprocal dyadic relationships) and cliques (which refer to groups of individuals who interact frequently),
crowds are characterized more by shared reputations or images than actual interactions (Brown & Larson,
2009). These crowds reflect different prototypic identities (such as jocks or brains) and are often linked with
adolescents’ social status and peers’ perceptions of their values or behaviors.

Romantic relationships

Adolescence is the developmental period during which romantic relationships typically first emerge. Initially,
same-sex peer groups that were common during childhood expand into mixed-sex peer groups that are
more characteristic of adolescence. Romantic relationships often form in the context of these mixed-sex
peer groups (Connolly, Furman, & Konarski, 2000). Although romantic relationships during adolescence are
often short-lived rather than long-term committed partnerships, their importance should not be minimized.
Adolescents spend a great deal of time focused on romantic relationships, and their positive and negative
emotions are more tied to romantic relationships (or lack thereof) than to friendships, family relationships,
or school (Furman & Shaffer, 2003). Romantic relationships contribute to adolescents’ identity formation,
changes in family and peer relationships, and adolescents’ emotional and behavioral adjustment.
.Sexual orientation refers to whether a person is sexually and romantically attracted to others of the same
sex, the opposite sex, or both sexes. For example, adolescence is often when individuals who are lesbian,
gay, bisexual, or transgender come to perceive themselves as such (Russell, Clarke, & Clary, 2009). Thus,
romantic relationships are a domain in which adolescents experiment with new behaviors and identities.