Good morning, afternoon, evening, night, whenever you're watching this, welcome back to the Mr. Sin channel. Over the past couple of videos, we've been spending a lot of time talking about childhood and development. And today we're going to be changing gears a little bit and talk about adolescent development as we review unit six, topic four of AP Psychology.
When a child goes through puberty, they move out of childhood and into adolescence. During puberty, the body goes through a variety of physical changes for both men and women. Puberty is what also allows men and women to be able to reproduce.
During adolescence, an individual's reasoning is self-focused. This is why it's common for teens to think that they are the only ones experiencing something, which unfortunately can lead to a person feeling isolated or or possibly disconnected from society. Individuals and adolescents may also feel like society and the people around them are judging them and watching them.
This is known as the imaginary audience. This can cause a teen to develop self-conscious behavior and possibly anxiety. If we quickly connect back to Piaget and cognitive development, we can see that we are in the formal operational stage of cognitive development.
During this stage, individuals can start to think abstractly and can break down larger hypothetical situations and problems. Besides sexual organs developing, the brain also goes through of changes during this stage of life. The limbic system along with new hormones can lead an individual to become more emotional and make more rash decisions.
At the same time, the frontal lobe of the brain is still developing, which makes it hard for individuals to understand risks and be able to fully think long term. This is known as the personal fable, which is when an adolescent believes that they are unique. During this stage in life, individuals will experience a variety of emotional, social, and physical changes, which can cause stress and confusion.
If we go back to Eric Erickson. stages of development, we can see that an individual in this stage of life is in the identity versus role confusion. Remember, we talked about these stages in our Unit 6 Topic 2 video. During the identity versus role confusion stage, a person seeks to understand who they are. Peer groups become extremely important during this stage.
Individuals will often seek friendships and will conform to their new peer group. Here's also when roles start to solidify and people understand their place in the world. If this doesn't happen, individuals may feel lost or lack a sense of purpose.
This is a difficult time in life. and many people will walk around with a mask on. On the outside they'll appear a certain way, but internally they're trying to figure everything out, just like everyone else. One quick story that connects into this stage of life. When I was in college, I was an RA, and I was in charge of a section of the freshman dorm.
I was always surprised at the start of each school year, we would see a pretty big uptake in the amount of students who started smoking. Many students who never smoked in high school or before, started smoking the first year of college, but oftentimes would quit after winter break. What was happening was that new students wanted to fit in with the. with their peers as soon as possible. They'd find a new friend group, and if people smoked in that group, they would smoke to fit in.
After students had been at the school for a while, they had a better sense of who they were and a new form of security. They then formed new friend groups that better suited them. So as the first semester ended, we saw less students smoking because they were no longer trying to conform to a peer group that didn't fit their interests.
We can see in this example that when students first went to college, they wanted to fit in right away. So they found a group and then conformed to that group. Over time, as the students better understood their own identity and what they wanted, found a group that better aligned with their values.
Identity in general can be a hard concept to grapple with. James Marsha looked at how individuals gain a better sense of identity. Marsha believed that identity was developed through exploration by an individual and commitment to that identity.
When looking at identity, we can see that Marsha identified different stages. First is foreclosure. This is when an individual has a high degree of commitment to a particular identity, but they have yet to look at other options.
For example, if you're raised in a Republican family or a Democrat family, you may have a high degree of loyalty to that particular political. party, but you've not really looked at other possibilities. Next is the identity diffusion stage. This is when an individual has not explored other possibilities, but also is not committed to their current identity or status.
Here, an individual may not know what they want to do with their life or even possibly care. From there, we move into the moratorium stage. Here, an individual has a low commitment to identity, but are now extremely active in exploring different possibilities. This is when an individual starts to think about what they want to do with their life.
What is important to them? What values do they have? What values do they have?
What values do they have? And lastly, we have the identity achievement stage. This is when an individual has explored a variety of different options and has come to their own decision on their identity and what they want from life. Here, exploration is high and commitment is high. One thing to note is these stages are not set.
Some people may go in a different order and other individuals may go through this process multiple times. Different factors in life would also impact this, such as religion, work, politics, family life, and so on. Throughout adolescence, people also further developed the concept of morality. Lawrence Kohlberg developed different levels of moral thinking, starting with childhood and moving through adolescence and beyond. The first level is pre-conventional morality, which starts with childhood.
Individuals focus on following the rules set before them. Behaviors are motivated by rewards and fear of punishment. As children get older, they become more individually interested, and behaviors are driven by self-interest and external rewards.
From there we go to level two, which is conventional morality. This is early adolescence. Their behavior is driven by social approval. from other individuals. This is just one of the reasons why you'll hear people say, pick who you hang out with carefully.
Now eventually, behavior starts to be driven by external authority and social order. Laws and rules are important. Next is post-conventional morality, which starts later in adolescence and continues throughout the rest of an individual's life. This starts with behaviors being guided by individual rights and social order. Eventually, behavior is driven by internal moral principles as ethics becomes more important to an individual's life.
We'll talk more about Lawrence Kohlberg and his levels of of moral thinking and morality in general in our Unit 6 Topic 6 video. And just like that, another topic review video is done. Now you know the drill, answer the questions on the screen, and check your answers in the comment section down below. And if you're finding value in these videos, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, and check out my Ultimate Review Packet. It's a great resource that covers all the units of AP Psychology, and it'll definitely help you get an A in your class and a 5 on that national exam.
As always, thank you so much for watching. I'm Mr. Sin, and I'll see you next time online.