10.1: Theories of Adolescent Socioemotional Development
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Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Discuss theories about the role of adolescence in the lifespan
- Describe adolescence’s central challenge: the search for identity
- Identify the developmental tasks and milestones of the adolescent period
Seventeen-year-old Armaan rushes downstairs with a basket full of his laundry. He loads the washer and readies his change of clothes and water bottle for after-school marching band practice. That evening, after a three-hour practice, Armaan grabs a veggie burger with friends. Back home, he takes a quick shower and starts studying for a big history test. Before he goes to bed, he texts with friends as he unloads the dishwasher. It’s only Monday, but he’s excitedly anticipating watching the high school football game on Friday night and sleeping in on Saturday.
This brief window into the life of an older adolescent leads to some big-picture questions about this period of the lifespan, including what its central developmental tasks are and how psychologists mark progression through them. Adolescence is a time of profound and often rapid change in multiple dimensions, including identity exploration and achievement, and emotional development. These changes necessitate sensitive and accommodating responses from individuals who care for teens, as well as from societal institutions like schools and governments that serve them.
What Is Adolescence?
Human development is a series of transitions, particularly so in adolescence, which can bring sudden and dramatic changes like the onset of puberty , changes in voice, and growth in height. Adolescence is a time many societies set aside for children to transition to adult stature, status, roles, and capabilities. In other countries, children may quickly transition to adult responsibilities without being afforded the time and space to adjust to this immense developmental shift.
For instance, in several Asian and African cultures, adolescents tend to have strong family obligations and responsibilities, emphasizing group harmony and family loyalty. Older adolescents in Cambodia and rural Vietnam assume caretaking tasks and the family supporter’s role (Yi, 2015). Teenage girls may face stricter gender roles and fewer opportunities than boys. Early marriage and childbearing are common in Bangladesh (Uddin, 2021) and Nigeria (Musa et al., 2021). In WEIRD nations like the United States and Canada, many families consider finishing high school a marker of adulthood, and eighteen-year-old graduates may begin to work full time and start their own households or may enter further schooling or a trade. Adolescence focuses on preparation for adulthood, such as through extended formal education, and it precludes adult status and its markers such as driving and beginning to participate in the workforce (Figure 10.2).
The smoothness of the adolescent transition in countries such as the United States and Canada also varies by family composition, cultural beliefs and backgrounds, available opportunities, and socioeconomic status (SES). Adolescents from single-parent families, for example, often help with household tasks like caring for younger siblings and may even contribute to household finances. Teens who grow up in farming families or families that own a bodega or other business may begin to help run the family business and then continue to do so, if they also enjoy that industry. Teens who show interest in an academic education beyond high school may spend after-school and summer hours in academic enrichment activities. Still other teens who show interests in craft or trade industries may pursue hobbies such as sewing, electrical work, or woodworking to begin identifying potential occupational options. As these examples show, it is difficult to characterize adolescence in many countries as solely continuous or discontinuous in nature.
To understand the complexities of the adolescent transition, consider the developmental tasks associated with it. These are the biologically, psychologically, and socially relevant challenges of adolescence (Havighurst, 1948; 1972). They include achieving the cognitive development crucial for decision-making, acquiring impulse control and reasoning, developing a sense of self and personal identity, and building friendships while navigating social dynamics to gain a sense of belonging and acceptance. In addition to the biological and physical changes of puberty discussed in Chapter 9 Physical and Cognitive Development in Adolescence (Ages 12 to 18), adolescents also face several psychological and social developmental tasks (Table 10.1). To the extent that they make individual progress on these tasks, adolescents gradually mature into adulthood.
| Psychological | Social |
|---|---|
|
|
Many societies and cultures use explicit markers to recognize progress toward adult status. Anthropologists call such a marker a rite of passage . Table 10.2 and Figure 10.3 show some examples (Alcorta & Sosis, 2020). Parents, teens, and society alike put much attention and energy into some of these. Notice that no single marker signifies adult status in all areas of life.
| Marker (Rite) | Age of Adult Status (Years) |
|---|---|
| Participating in bar/bat Mitzvah (Jewish religion) | 12–13 |
| Participating in quinceañera/o (many Latine cultures) | 15 |
| Driving | 15–17 depending on the state |
| Attending “R” rated movie without caregiver | 17 |
| Graduating from high school | 17–19 |
| Voting | 18 |
| Consenting to sexual activity | 16–18 (depending upon U.S. state) |
| Drinking, purchasing alcohol | 21 |
| Renting a car | 25 |
| Procuring own health insurance | 26 (Affordable Care Act, United States) |
Psychosocial Theory of Development: Identity versus Role Confusion
To a developmental psychologist, a teenager’s social struggles and ever-evolving choices illustrate the work of adolescence: actively exploring interests, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, peer relations, and work and community roles. Collectively, these make up the most important psychosocial development task: the formation of identity.
Identity, also known as ego identity, is an individual’s complete sense of who they are, including their traits, capabilities, interests, values, and social roles. The building of identity is a lifelong process, but it takes on critical importance in adolescence because of both the sheer number of changes experienced and the sense that life is reaching a point at which our decisions and choices could have lifelong consequences (Branje et al., 2021; Crain, 1992). Forming a coherent identity takes time, and adolescence accommodates this key developmental task. Erik Erikson ’s contribution to identity is sometimes thought to be one of his greatest insights, perhaps in part due to his own experience as an immigrant with a varied cultural heritage. Erikson moved across multiple countries in his youth, experienced multiple name changes, identified as multi racial, and studied identity in multiple cultural and historic contexts (Miller, 2011).
Erikson’s fifth psychosocial stage, identity versus role confusion , involves forming a stable and whole identity by first exploring various roles and identities. This stage typically occurs from ages twelve to eighteen years and is distinctive as a stage when individuals try out a variety of roles and personas in a journey to discover their individual identity. Developing an identity leads to strength and stability of identity. Failing to develop an identity results in role confusion, sometimes called diffusion , which leads to feeling fragmented or lost (Orenstein & Lewis, 2022). A strong sense of identity helps teenagers reject negative self-evaluations that don't match their inner and outer experiences, reducing anxiety. As they explore their identity, adolescents consider their past experiences, societal expectations, and personal aspirations to establish their values and discover who they are.
A recent study looked at identity development and depressive symptoms in Belgian adolescents between the ages of twelve to twenty-five years. They found young people generally develop a stronger sense of identity and experience less role confusion, though this can vary at different stages. A strong sense of identity is linked to fewer depressive symptoms, while role confusion is linked to more depressive symptoms throughout adolescence (Bogaerts et al., 2021).
It Depends: Should We Take the Teen Movie Genre Seriously?
Film critics and social commentators may dismiss the latest movies about teenage experiences and the coming-of-age process, but they often become huge popular successes, and for good reason. Not only are they highly entertaining, filled with young stars and amusing plots, but they are tailor-made for a teenage audience that likes to see their own experiences represented, and perhaps to see whether the adult filmmakers truly understand them. Some popular examples of the teenage movie genre include Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Spider Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), The Breakfast Club (1985), Eighth Grade (2018), Mean Girls (2004, 2023), Juno (2007), and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018).
Almost without exception, these films take place in and around a U.S. high school, and they frequently introduce the audience to various cliques and larger social groups within the school’s social ecosystem. For example, in The Breakfast Club , a student lists cliques like “brains” and “jocks.” Mean Girls starts with a character pointing out different social groups. Each clique and crowd offers teenagers a way to select and try on parts of their possible identity, while some crowds are socially selected for them. Eighth Grade shows the life of a middle school-high school student, Kayla (Elsie Fisher), navigating anxiety-inducing social situations, social media overload, typical parent-child communication struggles, questions about sexuality, and her personal and public identity. These films highlight a central adolescent experience—exploring and achieving a complete sense of self. They reflect adolescents' experiences, sometimes playfully naming groups and often depicting characters moving through identities and roles to complete a quest. Adults are sometimes peripheral or absent.
Other adolescent themes frequently depicted in movies include inspiration, social comparison, coping, identification and idealization, and strong social relationships that bring joy, gratitude, and loss (Greenwood & Long, 2015). These themes speak to the youth culture that thrives in high schools, where the most important focus seems to be on social status and peer relations. All else pales in importance, even the whole point of school—academics. While sociocultural context and individual personality traits govern the way teens interpret these films and behave in school and out, by responding to these movies with enthusiasm, adolescent audiences tell us they are valid perspectives on their real-life experience.
Recall that in Erikson’s theory, development is motivated and fueled by psychosocial crises or challenges. The relatively rapid changes in the physical bodies of adolescents guarantee that others in the social environment will begin reacting differently when around them. For example, the deep voice, tall stature, and facial hair of a fifteen-year-old male might lead others to expectations of mature thinking and behavior, even as he still struggles with some immature thought processes and lack of adult levels of brain development and self-regulation. Interactions between the developing individual and those in their social environment propel developmental progress. The adolescent is motivated to make sense of their changing place in the world and thus begin the process of identity exploration.
Identity Statuses
James Marcia built on Erikson’s work by focusing on how best to describe the developing adolescent’s identity status at any point in time (Marcia, 1966; 1980). Marcia emphasized two key questions in determining the identity status of an individual: “Is there evidence of identity exploration?” and “Is the individual currently committed to an identity?” The answers, yes or no, establish the adolescent as being in identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, or identity diffusion (Figure 10.4). Those who reach identity achievement often arrive after much exploration, while those in moratorium are still exploring different roles without making firm decisions (Kroger et al. 2010). These statuses also take into account various aspects of an individual’s identity, including their occupation, sexuality, beliefs, and values. Often, adolescents move through these identity statuses before settling on successful identity achievement.
In identity moratorium , individuals are actively exploring various identities but not declaring an identity to be fully formed, instead experiencing an "identity crisis." Meeus (2023) noted that adolescents spend much of their time in identity moratorium, where identity is a work in progress. Although the term makes this sound negative, the moratorium provides the psychological space and motivation to explore. A newfound ability to imagine possible selves , various identities they may work toward in the future, motivates adolescents to start on the path toward achieving an identity. For example, people often describe college as a great period of moratorium wherein you explore various academic interests and potential paths while meeting a wider range of people.
In identity diffusion , which most closely aligns with Erikson’s role confusion, individuals have low commitment and often feel lost; they do not actively seek an identity. Marcia (1980) described them as lacking a clear sense of where they will fit into society as an adult and at risk of role confusion. This might be an acceptable identity status in early adolescence, but society’s expectation is that all individuals will use these years to explore and pursue interests, abilities, and roles. By exploring roles and interests, adolescents move toward identity achievement , the realization and commitment to a coherent understanding of themselves and their relationship with society. This is the pivotal psychosocial achievement of adolescence, and it provides adolescents with an initial sense of direction, purpose, and a starting point in the world at large as they enter adulthood.
In Marcia’s concept of identity foreclosure , the developing teen shows an early commitment to an identity, claiming they know who they are and what they stand for, even if there is no evidence they did any exploratory work to reach that conclusion. For example, teens in early and even mid-adolescence will sometimes state their political values—such as by taking a particular stance on climate or immigration or foreign policy—but these values typically match those of their parents, and the adolescent cannot elaborate on any specifics. Identity foreclosure may serve a developmental purpose by giving the young adolescent a starting point for later exploration—after all, the world is complex and having an initial set of answers to help make sense of it can be comforting. The key is for the adolescent to eventually begin actively exploring their values and interests, with the goal of backing their own belief system with experience and/or thoughtful consideration. While an adolescent might align with their parents on a value or identity, such as sharing the same religious identity, an adolescent who has identity achievement will be able to fully explain how they arrived at that identity on their own.
While identity achievement often occurs during adolescence or early adulthood, it is not uncommon for it to take many years beyond adolescence for individuals to fully settle into identity achievement. After all, in the decades beyond adolescence we are often learning and growing across several aspects of our identity, potentially shifting in our occupations, family and friendship roles, and moral beliefs or personal values. Achieving identity in adolescence represents a pivotal step in identity , rather than a permanent, unchangeable status.
Link to Learning
This short Pew Research Center article explores survey data on the similarities between teens’ and their parents’ religious and political views.
References
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