Chapter 10 Outline

• Stanley Hall is considered the founding father of psychology of adolescence
• He believed in the theory of recapitulation; humans relive the history of evolution as we grow up the four stages include

1. Infancy 1-4 years children reenact animals by crawling
2. Childhood stage 4-8 years hunting/fishing societies imitation
3. Pre adolescent age 8-12 early savagery, where children are disposed to learning discipline
4. Adolescent 12/13-22/25 “sturm and drang” which means storm and stress. An inevitable biogenetic process everyone must go through in order to reach adulthood

• Many socioligists critique him for the last stage such as Margaret Mead, who explains that adolescent stress can vary among cultures
• Adolescence is the first major role in socialization in most societies
• In some roles they are no longer children while others they are still children because they are not adults yet. This leads to social discontinuity
• In American culture we over emphasize the role of the child and the adult

Adolescent Subculture

• Functions include

1. Gives a sense of identity
2. Satisfies the needs for primary group relations
3. Provides a collective protection from adult controls

• Hans Sebald believes eaight important elements to be relatively unique values and norms, in group lingo, distinct channels of mass communication, unique styles and fads, sense of solidarity, status criteria for social prestige, influence and power of leaders enhancing the collectivity and the gratification of specific needs that the social structure fails to provide
• Romantic Idealism is a common and one of the most important pre requisites for adolescents development as well as subculture
• It is defined as an optimism based on one’s wishful perception of reality

Counter Culture

• Defined as an expression of adolescent protests against extisting cultural values and social norms of the adult world
• Often times deviant or illegal acts can be encourages
• They tend to involve the working class
• “socially dislocated” environments are the most important variable in deviance

Problem Aspects of Adolescent Socialization and Personality

• problems are a product of stress
• there are two types of stress, good stress which is enhancing and functional and bad stress which is dysfunctional and endangering

Experience Sampling Method

• Csikszentmihayil believes there needs to be a balanced tension between talent and skills.
• Csikszentmihayil and Larson use the Experience Sampling method to examine the thoughts of 75 high school students
• They found a number of problems high schoolers are faced with
• Problems of solitude; student spend 25% of their waking hours alone in solitude. This is abnormal and alarming to other cultures. This may contribute to American culture’s emphasis on individualism and it can be beneficial. However, for the most part it is most likely detrimental leading to depression and lonelies
• Problems in family context; it is concluded that the main sources of adolescent stress are communication social support and trust and autonomy. Much of this is not strong in the family element of these teenagers
• This study found that teens who spend more time with their families achieve better grades
• In Davis’ classic work he describes 5 main structural factors for parent and adolescent conflict:

1. Rapid rate of social cultural change
2. Differing rates of socialization which cause a cultural lag
3. Physiologial differences such as menopause early aging versus puberty
4. Psychosocial differences such as adult realism vs. youthful idealism (romantic idealism)
5. Sociological differences parental author and children challenging this complete authority

• Problems in the context of peer relations
• Studies show that stressful events such as a break up have the most impact on behavior measures (Dorn Busch)
• Friends have the potential to produce fear of social rejection, which is powerful
• Americans are more subjected to peer pressure
• Negative peer influence affect high school drop outs
• Problems in context of school
• Larsons studies show that studies report being sad, irritable and bored the most feelings may derive from our school system
• Classrooms provide largely negative feedback
• The ratio 30:1 doesn’t allow for personal feedback or support

Comparisons and Analysis

• The chapter compares are educational system to Japan’s, which is much more disciplined. Differences include
• 240 school days compared to 180 in U.S
• A much faster moving curriculum
• Effects of this system include: A high school dropout rate of only 3%
• Although Japan has a higher suicide rate, it is significantly lower among adolescents
• Juvenile delinquency is significantly less

Critiques

• Coming from Rohlen, this authoritarian structure is dysfunctional because
• Speaking nor writing is encouraged
• Children do not learn to express their ideas
• They lack critical thinking skills
• Schools give little effort to develop analytical thinking and reasoning
• As a result, Japan has the lowest amount of Nobel Prize winner during 1901 to 1982 having only 3 while Americans have 126