1. Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part V Chapter Sixteen
Adolescence: Psychosocial Development
Identity
Relationships
Sexuality
Sadness and Anger
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield Tattoon, M.A. 1

2. Identity
A consistent definition of one’s self as a
unique individual, in terms of roles,
attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations.
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3. Identity
– identity versus diffusion
• Erikson’s terms for the fifth stage of
development, in which the person tries to
figure out “Who am I?” but is confused
as to which of many possible roles to
adopt.
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4. Identity, cont.
– identity achievement
• Erikson’s term for the attainment of
identity, or the point at which a person
understands who he or she is as a
unique individual, in accord with past
experiences and future plans.
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5. Identity, cont.
• Not Yet Achievement
– identity diffusion is the opposite of identity
achievement…
• it is a situation in which an adolescent does not
seem to know or care what his or her identity is.
– “Whatever.”
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6. Identity, cont.
• Not Yet Achievement
– Foreclosure
• Erickson’s term for premature identity formation,
which occurs when an adolescent adopts
parents’ or society’s roles and values
wholesale, without questioning and analysis.
– short-circuit their search by not questioning traditional
values
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7. Identity, cont.
• Not Yet Achievement, cont.
– moratorium
• A way for adolescents to postpone making
identity achievement choices by finding an
accepted way to avoid identity achievement.
– going to college is the most common example
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8. Identity, cont.
• Four Arenas of Identity Achievement
highlighted by Erikson…
– religious identity
• few teenagers achieve
• most religions expect young people to struggle
with theological questions
– sexual or gender identity
• “sex/sexual” referring to biological male/female
characteristics
• “gender” referring to cultural and social characteristics
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9. Identity, cont.
• Four Arenas of Identity Achievement…
– “political” or “ethnic” identity
• political, identifying with a party
• ethnic, identifying with a person
– vocational identity
• few teenagers can find meaningful work
• most available jobs are different from in the past
• the required skills for many vocations take years
to attain – makes it premature to select at age
16
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10. Relationships
• Adults and teenagers
• Conflicts at home
– bickering – repeated,
petty arguments
What do you see in the body
position of these two that
suggests a generational
conflict?
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11. Relationships
• Closeness with the family
– Communication
• talk openly with one another
– Support
• rely on one another
– Connectedness
• emotionally close
– Control
• encourage or limit autonomy
– parental monitoring – parent knowledge about child’s
whereabouts
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12. Relationships
• Ongoing influence
• Peer Support
• Cliques and Crowds
– Clique
• A group of adolescents made up of close friends who are
loyal to one another while excluding outsiders
– Crowd
• A large group of adolescents who have something in
common but who are not necessarily related
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13. Relationships
• Choosing friends
– peer pressure
• social pressure to conform to peer activities
– deviance training
• destructive peer support in which one person shows
another how to rebel against authority or social norms
– peer selection
• ongoing, active process whereby adolescents select
friends based on shared interests and values
– peer facilitation
• encouragement adolescents give one another to partake
in activities or behaviors they would not otherwise do
alone – constructive or destructive
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14. Relationships
• Friends of Both Sexes
– parents sometime worry about boy-girl
contact..
• Immigrant Youth
– millions of immigrants born abroad or those
whose parents were born in another nation
• one-third in Frankfurt
• one-half in Amsterdam
• two-thirds in Los Angeles and New York
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15. Sexuality
• Before Committed Partnership
1. groups of friends, exclusively one sex or the
other
2. a loose association of girls and boys, with
public interactions within a crowd
3. small mixed-sex groups of the advanced
members of the crowd
4. formation of couples, with private intimacies
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16. Sexuality
• Romances
– first appears in high school
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17. Sexuality
• Homosexual Youth
– complications slow down the formation of friendships
and romantic bonds
• Learning About Sex
– parents and societies continue to be concerned about
adolescent sexual relationships
• Peers
– sexual behavior is strongly influenced by information,
and examples of other adolescents
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18. Sexuality, cont.
• Parents
– play a pivotal role in teenagers sexual decisions
• Sex Education in School
– U.S. began a massive experiment in 1998
• Sexual Behavior
– not all adolescents are having sex
– rates vary from nation to nation
• teen births overall have decreased dramatically in
every nation
• the use of “protection” has increased
• the abortion rate is also down
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19. Sadness and Anger
• Comorbidity
– a situation in which two or more unreleated
illnesses or disorders occur at the same time
• Depression
– Clinical depression
• Suicide
– Suicidal ideation
• Parasuicide
• Cluster suicides
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20. Sadness and Anger, cont.
• More destructiveness
• Breaking the law
– Incidence
– Prevalence
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21. Sadness and Anger, cont.
• Cause of delinquency
– Life-course-persistent offender
– Adolescence-limited offender
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