Research 1.
♥ What are the psychological features of adolescents?
♥I want to search about the human minds of adolescents. Almost teenagers represent certain features of their human minds that are not always true but universal things.
Social development[edit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescence)
Identity development
A common belief about adolescence is that it is the time when teenagers form personal identities. Egocentrism in adolescents forms a self-conscious desire to feel important in their peer groups and enjoy social acceptance.[90] Empirical studies suggest that this process might be more accurately described as identity development, rather than formation, but confirms a normative process of change in both content and structure of one's thoughts about the self.[91] Since choices made during adolescent years can influence later life, high levels of self-awareness and self-control during mid-adolescence will lead to better decisions during the transition to adulthood.[citation needed] Researchers have used three general approaches to understanding identity development: self-concept, sense of identity, and self-esteem. The years of adolescence create a more conscientious group of young adults. Adolescents pay close attention and give more time and effort to their appearance as their body goes through changes. Unlike children, teens put forth an effort to look presentable (1991).[4] The environment in which an adolescent grows up also plays an important role in their identity development. Studies done by the American Psychological Association have shown that adolescents with a less privileged upbringing have a more difficult time developing their identity.
Self-concept[edit]
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 with physical traits whereas as adolescents, they define themselves based on their values, thoughts and opinions.
Adolescents can conceptualize multiple "possible selves" they could become[94] and long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices.[95] Exploring these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual self toward the ideal self (who the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (who the adolescent does not want to be). For many, these distinctions are uncomfortable, but they also appear to motivate achievement through behavior consistent with the ideal and distinct from the feared possible selves.[94][96]
Further distinctions in self-concept, called "differentiation," occur as the adolescent recognizes the contextual influences on their own behavior and the perceptions of others, and begin to qualify their traits when asked to describe themselves.[97] Differentiation appears fully developed by mid-adolescence.[98] Peaking in the 7th-9th grades, the personality traits adolescents use to describe themselves refer to specific contexts, and therefore may contradict one another. The recognition of inconsistent content in the self-concept is a common source of distress in these years (see Cognitive dissonance),[99] but this distress may benefit adolescents by encouraging structural development.
Sense of identity[edit]
Unlike the conflicting aspects of self-concept, identity represents a coherent sense of self stable across circumstances and including past experiences and future goals. Everyone has a self-concept, whereas Erik Erikson argued that not everyone fully achieves identity. Erikson's theory of stages of development includes the identity crisis in which adolescents must explore different possibilities and integrate different parts of themselves before committing to their beliefs. He described the resolution of this process as a stage of "identity achievement" but also stressed that the identity challenge "is never fully resolved once and for all at one point in time".[100] Adolescents begin by defining themselves based on their crowd membership. "Clothes help teens explore new identities, separate from parents, and bond with peers." Fashion has played a major role when it comes to teenagers "finding their selves"; Fashion is always evolving, which corresponds with the evolution of change in the personality of teenagers.[101] Just as fashion is evolving to influence adolescents so is the media. "Modern life takes place amidst a never-ending barrage of flesh on screens, pages, and billboards."[102] This barrage consciously or subconsciously registers into the mind causing issues with self-image a factor that contributes to an adolescence sense of identity. Researcher James Marcia developed the current method for testing an individual's progress along these stages.[103][104] His questions are divided into three categories: occupation, ideology, and interpersonal relationships. Answers are scored based on extent to which the individual has explored and the degree to which he has made commitments. The result is classification of the individual into a) identity diffusion in which all children begin, b) Identity Foreclosure in which commitments are made without the exploration of alternatives, c) Moratorium, or the process of exploration, or d) Identity Achievement in which Moratorium has occurred and resulted in commitments.[105]
Research since reveals self-examination beginning early in adolescence, but identity achievement rarely occurring before age 18.[106] The freshman year of college influences identity development significantly, but may actually prolong psychosocial moratorium by encouraging reexamination of previous commitments and further exploration of alternate possibilities without encouraging resolution.[107] For the most part, evidence has supported Erikson's stages: each correlates with the personality traits he originally predicted.[105] Studies also confirm the impermanence of the stages; there is no final endpoint in identity development.[108]
Environment and identity[edit]
An adolescent's environment plays a huge role in their identity development.[92] While most adolescent studies are conducted on white, middle class children, studies show that the more privileged upbringing people have, the more successfully they develop their identity.[92] The forming of an adolescent's identity is a crucial time in their life. It has been recently found that demographic patterns suggest that the transition to adulthood is now occurring over a longer span of years than was the case during the middle of the 20th century. Accordingly, youth, a period that spans late adolescence and early adulthood, has become a more prominent stage of the life course. This therefore has caused various factors to become important during this development.[109] So many factors contribute to the developing social identity of an adolescent from commitment, to coping devices,[110] to social media. All of these factors are affected by the environment an adolescent grows up in. A child from a more privileged upbringing is exposed to more opportunities and better situations in general. An adolescent from an inner city or a crime-driven neighborhood is more likely to be exposed to an environment that can be detrimental to their development. Adolescence is a sensitive period in the development process, and exposure to the wrong things at that time can have a major affect on future decisions. While children that grow up in nice suburban communities are not exposed to bad environments they are more likely to participate in activities that can benefit their identity and contribute to a more successful identity development.[92]
Self-esteem[edit]
The final major aspect of identity formation is self-esteem, one's thoughts and feelings about one's self-concept and identity. Contrary to popular belief, there is no empirical evidence for a significant drop in self-esteem over the course of adolescence.[117] "Barometric self-esteem" fluctuates rapidly and can cause severe distress and anxiety, but baseline self-esteem remains highly stable across adolescence.[118] The validity of global self-esteem scales has been questioned, and many suggest that more specific scales might reveal more about the adolescent experience.[119] 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 couldn'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.[120]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. Due to the fact that both men and women happen to have a low self-esteem after ending a romantic relationship, they are prone to other symptoms that is caused by this state. Depression and hopelessness are only two of the various symptoms and it is said that women are twice as likely to experience depression and men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide (Mearns, 1991; Ustun & Sartorius, 1995).[121]
Relationships[edit]
In general[edit]
The relationships adolescents have with their peers, family, and members of their social sphere play a vital role in the social development of an adolescent. As an adolescent's social sphere develops rapidly as they distinguish the differences between friends and acquaintances, they often become heavily emotionally invested in friends.[122] This is not harmful; however, if these friends expose an individual to potentially harmful situations, this is an aspect of peer pressure. Adolescence is a vital period in social development because adolescents can be easily influenced by the people they develop close relationships with. This is the first time individuals can truly make their own decisions, which also makes this a sensitive period. Relationships are vital in the social development of an adolescent due to the extreme influence peers can have over an individual. These relationships become vital because they begin to help the adolescent understand the concept of personalities, how they form and why a person has that specific type of personality. "The use of psychological comparisons could serve both as an index of the growth of an implicit personality theory and as a component process accounting for its creation. In other words, by comparing one person's personality characteristics to another's, we would be setting up the framework for creating a general theory of personality (and, ... such a theory would serve as a useful framework for coming to understand specific persons)."[123] Research shows that relationships have the largest affect over the social development of an individual.
Family[edit]
See also: Depression in childhood and adolescence and Sibling relationship
Teenage sisters
Adolescence marks a rapid change in one's role within a family. Young children tend to assert themselves forcefully, but are unable to demonstrate much influence over family decisions until early adolescence,[124] when they are increasingly viewed by parents as equals. When children go through puberty, there is often a significant increase in parent-child conflict and a less cohesive familial bond. Arguments often concern minor issues of control, such as curfew, acceptable clothing, and the adolescent's right to privacy,[125][126] which adolescents may have previously viewed as issues over which their parents had complete authority.[127] Parent-adolescent disagreement also increases as friends demonstrate a greater impact on one another, new influences on the adolescent that may be in opposition to parents' values. Social media has also played an increasing role in adolescent and parent disagreements.[128] While parents never had to worry about the threats of social media in the past, it has become a dangerous place for children. While adolescents strive for their freedoms, the unknowns to parents of what their child is doing on social media sites is a challenging subject, due to the increasing amount of predators on social media sites. Many parents have very little knowledge of social networking sites in the first place and this further increases their mistrust. Although conflicts between children and parents increase during adolescence, these are just relatively minor issues. Regarding their important life issues, most adolescents still share the same attitudes and values as their parents.[129]
During childhood, siblings are a source of conflict and frustration as well as a support system.[130] Adolescence may affect this relationship differently, depending on sibling gender. In same-sex sibling pairs, intimacy increases during early adolescence, then remains stable. Mixed-sex siblings pairs act differently; siblings drift apart during early adolescent years, but experience an increase in intimacy starting at middle adolescence.[131] Sibling interactions are children's first relational experiences, the ones that shape their social and self-understanding for life.[132] Sustaining positive sibling relations can assist adolescents in a number of ways. Siblings are able to act as peers, and may increase one another's sociability and feelings of self-worth. Older siblings can give guidance to younger siblings, although the impact of this can be either positive or negative depending on the activity of the older sibling.
A potential important influence on adolescence is change of the family dynamic, specifically divorce. With the divorce rate up to about 50%,[133] divorce is common and adds to the already great amount of change in adolescence. Custody disputes soon after a divorce often reflect a playing out of control battles and ambivalence between parents. In extreme cases of instability and abuse in homes, divorce can have a positive effect on families due to less conflict in the home. However, most research suggests a negative effect on adolescence as well as later development. A recent study found that, compared with peers who grow up in stable post-divorce families, children of divorce who experience additional family transitions during late adolescence, make less progress in their math and social studies performance over time.[134] Another recent study put forth a new theory entitled the adolescent epistemological trauma theory,[135] which posited that traumatic life events such as parental divorce during the formative period of late adolescence portend lifelong effects on adult conflict behavior that can be mitigated by effective behavioral assessment and training.[136] A parental divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect when a person is in his or her twenties and early thirties. These negative effects include romantic relationships and conflict style, meaning as adults, they are more likely to use the styles of avoidance and competing in conflict management.[137]
Despite changing family roles during adolescence, the home environment and parents are still important for the behaviors and choices of adolescents.[138] Adolescents who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to engage in various risk behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, fighting, and/or unprotected sexual intercourse.[138] In addition, parents influence the education of adolescence. A study conducted by Adalbjarnardottir and Blondal (2009) showed that adolescents at the age of 14 who identify their parents as authoritative figures are more likely to complete secondary education by the age of 22—as support and encouragement from an authoritative parent motivates the adolescence to complete schooling to avoid disappointing that parent.[139]
Peers[edit]
Peer groups are essential to social and general development. High quality friendships may enhance children's development regardless of the characteristics of those friends. As children begin to gain bonds with various people and create friendships with them, it later helps them when they are adolescent. This sets up the framework for adolescence and peer groups.[140] Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers[141] and a decrease in adult supervision.[142] Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood[143] and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.[144] It is also common for adolescents to use friends as coping devices in different situations.[145] A three factor structure of dealing with friends including avoidance, mastery, and nonchalance has shown that adolescent's use friends as coping devices with social stresses.
Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop social skills such as empathy, sharing, and leadership. Peer groups can have positive influences on an individual, such as on academic motivation and performance. But they can also have negative influences, like encouraging experimentation with drugs, drinking, vandalism, and stealing through peer pressure.[146] Susceptibility to peer pressure increases during early adolescence, peaks around age 14, and declines thereafter.[147]
While peers may facilitate social development for one another, they may also hinder it. In Spanish teenagers, emotional (rather than solution-based) reaction to problems and emotional instability have been linked with physical aggression against peers.[150] Both physical and relational aggression are linked to a vast number of enduring psychological difficulties, especially depression, as is social rejection.[151] Because of this, bullied adolescents often develop problems that lead to further victimization.[152] Bullied adolescents are both more likely to continued to be bullied and more likely to bully others in the future.[153] However, this relationship is less stable in cases of cyberbullying, a relatively new issue among adolescents.
On a larger scale, adolescents often associate with crowds, groups of individuals who share a common interest or activity. Often, crowd identities may be the basis for stereotyping young people, such as jocks or nerds. In large, multi-ethnic high schools, there are often ethnically-determined crowds as well.[154] While crowds are very influential during early and middle adolescence, they lose salience during high school as students identify more individually.[155]
After this research I could know various psychological features of adolescents and their psychological features can influence their behaviors. Therefore, I found that they also can influence school bullying. However I think I should choose specific features which can be main factors of school bullying and organize its correlation and effects.
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