Chapter 11.PDF

Chapter 11 Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 11.1 Describe physical development in young adulthood and contrast the effects of healthy versus unhealthy lifestyles. 11.2 Compare dominant vie...

Chapter 11 Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 11.1 Describe physical development in young adulthood and contrast the effects of healthy versus unhealthy lifestyles. 11.2 Compare dominant views of the changes young adults experience in cognitive functioning and suggest problem-solving approaches that apply the postformal or relativistic thinking needed for the unstructured problems they face. Garrett is 20 years old. During high school, he was enrolled in college prep and “hon- ors” classes. Despite the challenging course work in his private school, it was pretty easy for him to keep up a low A average. He wrote his papers in one draft and barely studied for exams. He was much more interested in winning tennis competitions and partying with his friends. Good scores on college entrance exams helped gain him admittance to an elite university. His parents were thrilled: Maybe he would settle down and actually complete the premed curriculum he signed up for. But Garrett is not quite “settled down.” Early in his second year, for example, Garrett fell off the roof of his fraternity house after climbing up on a drunken dare. His parents’ health insur- ance covered the costs of the hospitalization and rehab, and he lived at home for most of his recuperation. Back at school now, still in a leg cast for the multiple fractures to his leg, he spends much of his time playing poker and getting into what he considers hilarious predicaments while having sex with his latest girlfriend. He’s getting by in his classes without working too hard, but he can see that the more advanced courses coming up in the curriculum are going to take some serious work. At the moment, Garrett spends little time worrying about that future, while his parents keep paying his tuition and hoping for the best. Is Garrett an adult? Scholars are likely to disagree about the answer to this ques- tion. Most would agree that the onset of adolescence is marked by the changes of puberty. But there are no easily observed physical changes that signal entry into adult- hood. Instead, adulthood is a social construction. One or more culturally determined criteria usually must be met before one’s maturity is established, and the criteria vary depending on the observer and the culture. 427 428 Chapter 11 In the past, sociologists emphasized the achievement and timing of marker events as criteria for adulthood. These have included completing formal education, entering the adult workforce, leaving the family home, getting married, and becoming a parent (Juárez & Gayet, 2014). Around the middle of the last century, a large proportion of the U.S. popu- lation achieved many of these marker events between the ages of 18 and 24 (Rindfuss, 1991). However, if we evaluate our hypothetical student, Garrett, according to these tra- ditional marker events, he would not be an adult despite being in the “right” age range. From a sociological perspective, it seems to take longer to grow up today than it did at earlier points in history for many reasons. Some of these include the demand for a highly educated workforce and the increased cost of this education (Jacobs & Stoner-Eby, 1998), the difficulties inherent in earning enough to support children and in achieving stable employment (Halperin, 1998b), and the frequency of early, nonmarital sexual activity and the availability of contraception (Warner et al., 1998). All have had profound effects on the timing of life events. On one hand then, some markers of adult- hood are considerably delayed. For example, the median age for marriage in the United States was about 22 or 23 in 1976. By 2016, the median age for marriage had risen to about 28, a difference of more than 5 years in 4 decades (see Figure 11.1). On the other hand, other indicators of adulthood, such as the onset of sexual activity, occur much earlier than they did in the past. Such shifts in the timing of marker events appear to have delayed the onset of adulthood, FIGURE 11.1 Median age at first marriage: 1890 to 2017. especially in Western societies, where these Age (years) shifts have most often occurred and where 30 the pathways to adulthood are remarkable in their variability, so that specifying when 28 adulthood has been achieved is difficult. One approach is to ask young people themselves. 26 Men In a seminal study, Arnett (2000) asked young 24 people in the United States to rate the impor- Women tance of criteria in several areas (such as cog- 22 nitive, behavioral, emotional, biological, and legal criteria, as well as role transitions and 20 responsibilities) as definitions of adult status. He also asked participants whether they felt 18 they had reached adulthood. A majority of 16 respondents in their late teens and early twen- 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2017 ties answered both “yes and no.” Perhaps Garrett would say something similar. As you SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Censuses, 1890 to 1940, and Current Population ­Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, 1947 to 2017. can see in Figure 11.2, the proportion of young people in Arnett’s study who judged them- FIGURE 11.2 “Do you feel that you have selves to be adults gradually increased with age, with a clear majority reached adulthood?” of participants in their late 20s and early 30s doing so. Similar findings have been reported in other U.S. studies, includ- 100 ing studies of religious (e.g., Mormons) and ethnic (e.g., Latino) 90 yes no minorities, and in studies of young people throughout the world, 80 from Canada to Argentina to several European and Asian countries 70 * yes and no (Nelson & Luster, 2015). Can this delay in identifying oneself as an Percentage 60 * adult be attributed to the timing of role transitions? Apparently not. 50 40 * Most young people in the countries and cultures that have been stud- ied do not consider chronological age and role transitions such as 30 * marriage and parenthood, on their own, to be significant markers. 20 For example, Arnett’s (2000) respondents indicated that the two most 10 * important qualifications for adulthood are first, accepting respon- 0 12–17 18–25 26–35 36–55 sibility for the consequences of one’s actions, and second, making Age independent decisions. Becoming financially independent, a tradi- SOURCE: Arnett, J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of tional marker event, was third. Consequently, the subjective sense of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 472. Reprinted by permission of the American being an adult may be more important than the accomplishment and Psychological Association. timing of discrete tasks.  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 429 Across cultures, independence and autonomy are typically endorsed as important to feeling like an adult, but relational factors are also scored high on most young peo- ple’s lists of criteria for adulthood: having and keeping relationships and meeting obli- gations to family. As one research team put it, “independence and interdependence are not mutually exclusive” (Syed & Mitchell, 2015). There are cultural differences, of course. Young people from collectivist cultures often score relational factors nearer to the top of their lists than Westerners do. For example, in Argentina, being able to care for children and becoming less self-oriented are especially emphasized by college stu- dents (Facio & Micocci, 2003). In China, young working women highly rank being able to support their parents (Zhong & Arnett, 2014). Given that young people from 18 to 29 years old so often feel that they have not yet met their own criteria for reaching adulthood, Arnett (2000, 2015) proposes that this period be considered a distinct stage of life called emerging adulthood. Emerging adulthood is a sociological phenomenon and it is made possible by the kind of eco- nomic development that characterizes developed countries. If the labor of young peo- ple is not urgently needed for the economic well-being of their families, and if many occupations require extended years of education, then work is postponed, marriage and childbearing are likely to be delayed, and self-exploration can continue. Arnett (e.g., 2002, 2015) has argued that increasing globalization is spreading the experience of this new stage from Western societies to other parts of the world. Globalization is “a process by which cultures influence one another and become more alike through trade, immigration, and the exchange of information and ideas” (Arnett, 2002, p. 774), a process that has shifted into high gear with advances in telecommunications and transportation. In developing countries, young people increasingly move from rural communities to urban centers as they pursue expanding economic opportunities. More occupational and lifestyle options are available, and self-development tends to continue well past the teen years. Emerging adulthood is typically a more unstable time than adulthood. As they try to find their places in the adult world, emerging adults “move around a lot, go from job to job, and test out love and intimacy in a variety of ways” (Syed & Mitchell, 2015, p. 90). According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2012c), the average person changes jobs seven times between the ages of 18 and 27, but only half that often between the ages of 27 and 44. Moving at least annually during college is not uncommon for emerging adults, nor is moving in and out of the parental home or setting up housekeeping one or more times with a romantic partner, whether in college or not. A sense of life being in flux seems to characterize many young people in this period. The social world of emerging adults usually expands beyond immediate fam- ily, friends, and neighbors. While this presents new challenges for all young people whether they attend college or enter the work force, for some groups it may involve special new stressors. For African Americans, for example, this often means moving into a much more ethnically diverse world than the schools and neighborhoods of their childhood. In college, fewer instructors or students are likely to be Black; in work envi- ronments, few employers and co-workers will be Black. Consciousness of one’s minor- ity status is exacerbated by the fact that discrimination against African Americans in hiring and housing are still a reality in the United States (Rich, 2014). Arnett and Brody (2008) argue that dealing with identity issues with these added sources of stress may intensify the process. “We believe that identity issues are especially acute for African American emerging adults due to the injection of discrimination and prejudice, and that this may explain a range of puzzling findings” (p. 292). One is the change in sub- stance use during emerging adulthood. It is important to note that African American adolescents and adults engage in less substance use than White adolescents. But for some substances (tobacco, marijuana) there is a greater increase in use during emerg- ing adulthood for African Americans than for Whites. And in rare cases, there is a crossover effect; that is, Black substance use may reach greater levels than White sub- stance use. For example, by about age 26, Black female users of marijuana either match or begin to exceed the frequency of use of White female users. Figure 11.3 illustrates some changes in alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use across emerging adulthood from a longitudinal study of over 14,000 U.S. participants (Keyes et al., 2015). 430 Chapter 11 FIGURE 11.3 Sample age changes in substance use by White and Black emerging adults: a) alcohol, b) cigarettes, c) marijuana. A. Drink any days in the past 12 months B. Any cigarette use in the past 30 days 80% 70% 40 Proportion Proportion 60% 30 50% 20 40% 30% 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Mean Age Mean Age C. Any MJ use in the past 30 days 30% 25% Black or African White Males Proportion American Males 20% Black or African White Females American Females 15% 10% 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Mean Age SOURCE: Adapted from Keyes, K. M., Vo, T., Wall, M. M., Caetano, R., Suglia, S. Martins, S. S.,... Hasin, D. (2015). Racial/ethnic differences in use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana: Is there a cross-over from adolescence to adulthood? Social Science & Medicine, 124, 132–141. Another puzzling finding concerns suicide rates in the United States. As with sub- stance use, males are much more prone to suicide than females, and Whites are over twice as likely to commit suicide as Blacks. White males show a steady rise in suicide rates through much of adulthood, with the sharpest rise after age 65. But for Black males the peak suicide rate occurs much earlier, between ages 25 and 34 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Arnett and Brody speculate that “there are uniquely for- midable challenges to forming a Black male identity” in the United States and that for some the strain may become intolerable during early adulthood (2008, p. 293). Research on other ethnic minorities in the United States supports the idea that moving into a more ethnically diverse world after adolescence both extends the pro- cess of identity formation and increases its complexity. Fuligni (2007) looked at the children of Asian and Latin immigrant families and found, as you would expect, cul- ture-specific concerns among young adults. The children of the immigrant families had a stronger sense of “family obligation” than European American offspring. They expected to support and assist their families in many ways (e.g., caring for siblings, providing financial support, living near or with the family) and they believed that they should consider the family’s wishes when making important decisions. Interestingly, the researchers found that these kinds of values, while strongest in the immigrant chil- dren, also increased in young adulthood for all ethnic groups, including the European Americans. Apparently, the importance of connection, as well as autonomy, becomes clearer after adolescence. Immigrant children were most likely, as young adults, to experience a much more expanded social world if they went to college than if they did not, and this happened most often for those of East Asian background. With these  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 431 young people, Fuligni found a trend toward the kind of extended identity develop- ment that characterizes emerging adulthood. Their sense of obligation to family did not disappear, but it competed with new aspirations, “to be able to be doing some- thing that I like” and “to be the person you’re supposed to be” (p. 99). Is a stage of emerging adulthood a good or a bad thing? Could it be viewed as a tendency for modern youth to simply avoid taking on adult roles and responsibilities, nurtured by overprotective, indulgent parents? Arnett argues that in fact, there could be a grain of truth here: Many young adults seem to “find it burdensome and onerous to pay their own bills and do all the other things their parents (have) always done for them” (2007, p. 71). But he generally sees the ambivalence of young adults as a recog- MyLab Education nition of the value of an extended period of self-development to help them prepare Video Example 11.1 more adequately for taking on adult roles in a complex society. He points out that few Gary grew up in a Vietnamese emerging adults fail to “grow up.” By age 30 nearly all are stably employed, and three American family, who had certain quarters are married and have a child. There is also evidence that as adolescents move expectations for his future. He into young adulthood today they are not substantially different from their counter- describes clearly the stress that arises when need for autonomy parts in the 1970s. For example, high school seniors now and then report similar lev- and desire to meet family obliga- els of loneliness, anti-social behavior, self-esteem, and life satisfaction (Trzesniewski & tions come into conflict in young Donnellan, 2010). adulthood. But some researchers are not as sanguine about this new stage (see Syed, 2015). For example, Hendry and Kloep (2007) express concern that young people are more often inadequately prepared for adulthood than they are benefiting from an extended tran- sition into adulthood. Modern parents, they suggest, tend to both overindulge their children and to pressure them to excel, rather than assuring that their children are adequately educated in basic life skills (see the Applications section on “helicopter” parenting). Twenge (2013) examines cross-sectional data comparing different cohorts of college students and argues that the self-esteem movement has produced a genera- tion of more narcissistic individuals who are less willing to take responsibility for their lives and less concerned about others than previous generations have been. Although such views may all have “grains of truth,” only continuing research on this interesting new stage can resolve the issue. In this and the next chapter we will examine some of the key characteristics of life after adolescence, primarily for young people in the United States. We will refer to the period from about 18 to 30 as young adulthood, although we acknowledge Arnett’s argument that many 18- to 25-year-olds are better described as “emerging adults.” The early years of young adulthood are often an extended period of transition involving exploration of potential adult identities. We will begin by examining the physical characteristics of young adults and then move on to consider the cognitive changes that are likely in this period of life. In Chapter 12, we will explore the complexities of forming intimate, enduring adult attachments, maintaining or revamping family relationships, and making vocational commitments. That is, we will look at some of the myriad processes involved in taking one’s place as a contributing member of an adult community. Physical Development in Young Adulthood 11.1 Describe physical development in young adulthood and contrast the effects of healthy versus unhealthy lifestyles. Brain Development In Chapter 9, you learned that the onset of puberty initiates changes in the brain, such as gray matter thinning due in part to pruning, and massive increases in white matter as myelination proceeds. You also learned that there can be some imbalance in brain development, with subcortical and cortical areas maturing at different rates, and the circuitry that connects them lagging as well. The changes in structure and function that 432 Chapter 11 begin with puberty continue well into young adulthood. The greater flexibility—and vulnerability—of the adolescent brain carries forward into the mid- to late-twenties. Improvements in executive functions, learning, and thinking continue, both resulting from and influencing ongoing brain changes. Susceptibility to the onset of major mental disorders is extended into this life phase as well (Taber-Thomas & Pérez-Edgar, 2015). Let’s consider just one example of this ongoing maturational process. Inhibitory control, one of the executive functions, involves stopping ourselves from making a “usual” response in order to make a different response (see Chapter 3). Remember the Stroop test, in which you have to stop yourself from automatically reading the color word in order to name the color of the letters? Imaging studies show that in adults, tasks that require inhibitory control activate parts of the prefrontal cortex and several other cortical areas, all on the right side of the brain. In adolescents, different cortical areas on both sides of the brain are activated during these tasks, suggesting that the adult circuits are not fully developed yet. And, teens’ performance on these tasks is not as good as that of adults (e.g., Vara, Pang, Vidal, Anagnostou, & Taylor, 2014). But when does performance actually reach top levels? Knežević and Marinković (2017) addressed this question by comparing three age groups (“early 20s,” “mid- 20s” and “early 30s”) on a standard inhibitory control task. They also looked at event related potential (ERP) patterns as the participants completed the task. Only the “early 30s” group performed at top levels. The two younger groups were less accurate, and their responses were more rapid and impulsive. The ERP patterns helped corroborate that the oldest group was engaging in more reflection than the younger groups. Such data clearly demonstrate that brain development continues in young adulthood, sup- porting advances in functioning. Reaching Peak Physical Status By age 18 to 20, most people have reached their full physical growth. Sometime between 18 and 30, all our biological systems reach peak potential. For example, we can see, hear, taste, and smell as well as we ever will; our skin is as firm and resilient as it can be; the potential strength of muscle and bone is as great as we will ever experi- ence; and our immune systems provide us with the most effective protection we will ever have from diseases ranging from the common cold to cancer. Not all physical capacities reach their peak simultaneously. Visual acuity, for example, reaches a maxi- mum level at about age 20, with little decline for most people until about age 40. But auditory acuity appears to peak before age 20 and may show some declines soon after (Saxon & Etten, 1987; Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2016). There are certainly individual differences among us in the achievement of peak physi- cal status—for example, some people reach their full height by age 15, whereas others may not finish growing until age 18 or 20. There are also substantial differences among differ- ent physical skills in the timing of peak performance, which is usually assessed by look- ing at the records of “super-athletes” (e.g., Cotterill, 2017; Tanaka & Seals, 2003). Schulz and Curnow (1988) examined athletic performance records for superathletes in a wide variety of sports. On one hand, they found that maximal performance for most sports is reached within the young adult period; on the other hand, they found that the average age of greatest skill (e.g., winning an Olympic gold medal in track or achieving a Number 1 world ranking in tennis) is different from one sport to another, and sometimes depends on which particular skill is examined within a given sport. For example, the average age at which Olympic swimmers win gold medals is 19; professional golfers typically do not achieve a Number 1 ranking until age 34. For a professional baseball player, the average age for “most stolen bases” is 23, but the mean age for “hitting the most doubles” is 32. The differences in age of peak performance suggest that the relative importance of practice, training, knowledge, experience, and biological capacity varies from one skill to another. Skills that are based on muscle strength, flexibility, and speed of movement and response tend to peak early. Abilities that are heavily dependent on control, arm– hand steadiness, precision, and stamina tend to peak later. Overall, the greater the importance of cognitive factors in performance––factors such as strategy knowledge and use––the later a skill will top out (Cotterill, 2017).  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 433 Superathletes are those whose performance of a skill seems to match their full potential. Most of the rest of us are not concerned about achieving maximal skill, but we usually are motivated to maintain our physical capacities at high levels—including not only performance skills, but also sensory abilities, good health, and youthful appear- ance—during and beyond the early adult period. Clearly, biology plays a role here. For example, regardless of activity level, muscular strength begins to decline somewhat by about age 30. But research supports the importance of lifestyle in this process. There are good habits that help maintain peak or near-peak functioning and appearance, and there are bad habits that can erode functioning (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2016). For example, regular exercise can help both younger and older adults maintain muscle and bone strength and can keep the cardiovascular and respiratory systems functioning well. Smoking, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle accelerate loss of peak cardiovascu- lar and respiratory functioning and loss of muscle and bone. Smoking or any excessive drug or alcohol use can diminish functioning in a variety of physiological systems. For example, smoking contributes to more rapid wrinkling of the skin, and alcohol causes damage to the nervous system, the liver, and the urinary tract. “Eating right” is part of a healthy lifestyle. It means having regularly spaced meals (including breakfast) that are low in fat and that sample a range of food groups, allowing a proper balance of nutrients. Failure to eat right contributes to obesity, to depressed mood, and to many aspects of physical decline. Obesity is epidemic in the United States and other Western countries, and weight gain is especially likely between the ages of 20 and 40 (Haftenberger et al., 2016; Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2014). Longitudinal studies that have followed participants for 40 to 50 years have made clear that people who fail to follow healthy lifestyles in their young adult years suffer from poorer health later and that they are less satisfied with their lives in late adulthood when compared to people who do adopt healthy habits in young adult- hood (Belloc & Breslow, 1972; Mussen, Honzik, & Eichorn, 1982). None of this information is likely to be new to you. Many Americans, including young adults, are aware of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and of the liabilities that bad living habits pose. Do they heed what they know? We learned in Chapter 10 that adolescents often act in reckless ways that compromise their health and wellness. Often young adults are not much better. Con- sider their alcohol use. In an interview study FIGURE 11.4 Frequency of endorsement of five reasons for conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau (Lee et al., drinking in the young adult years. 2018), 41% of 20- to 24-year-olds reported heavy 1.0 Good Time Get Away drinking, often binge drinking (i.e., having at least five drinks in a row for men, 4 for women)..9 Relax Boredom Many young adults indicate that their drink- Get High ing has caused them problems, such as having.8 Proportion Reporting the Reason unplanned or unprotected sex, getting hurt, or.7 causing property damage (Brook & Willoughby, 2016; Hingson, 2010). Both human and animal.6 studies of adolescents and young adults indi- cate that the ongoing development of memory.5 and learning abilities may be inhibited in binge drinkers (An, Loes, & Trolian, 2017; Lacaille.4 et al., 2015). In Figure 11.3a you can see that.3 steep rises in alcohol use during the teens and early 20s tend to level off by the mid-20s (Keyes.2 et al., 2015). Such changes occur as young adults’ reasons for drinking begin to change. In one.1 study, “To have a good time with my friends” was the most common reason given by younger.0 participants, but it gradually declined after age 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 20 and was surpassed by the desire “to relax or Age (Years) relieve tension” as participants approached age SOURCE: Patrick, M. E. & Schulenberg, J. E. (2011). How trajectories of reasons for alcohol 30 (see Figure 11.4; Patrick & Schulenberg, 2011). use relate to trajectories of binge drinking: National panel data spanning late adolescence to early adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 47, 314. Reprinted by permission of the American This study also indicated that being in college is Psychological Association. 434 Chapter 11 a contributing factor to substance abuse in the United States, because college students drink more alcohol and smoke more marijuana than same-age peers who have never attended college. In addition to substance use problems, attending college appears to have nega- tive health effects in general. In one survey, over 20,000 college students completed a questionnaire in the fall of their first year of college and again one year later (Keup & Stolzenberg, 2004). Over the course of that year, they reported substantial declines in their emotional well-being, in their physical health, and in their health habits (e.g., reduced levels of exercise). Fromme et al. (2008) also found that between high school and the end of freshman year of college, young people reported substantial increases in alcohol and marijuana use, as well as sex with multiple partners. There was some variability depending on whether students lived at home (less increase) or not, and whether they came from urban (less increase), rural, or suburban high schools, but in all groups there was an increase. The unhealthy, underregulated lifestyles of many young adults are probably an outgrowth of multiple factors: poor application of problem-solving skills to practical problems (see the next section on cognitive development); perhaps a continuing sense of invulnerability that began in the adolescent years, which may be exacerbated by the fact that young adults can bounce back from physical stress far more readily than they will in later years; and the stresses of leaving home and facing the social and academic demands of college or the workplace—all steps that create new challenges to one’s identity. MyLab Education Self-Check 11.1 Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 11.2 Compare dominant views of the changes young adults experience in cognitive functioning and suggest problem-solving approaches that apply the postformal or relativistic thinking needed for the unstructured problems they face. Each year, millions of young people participate in a rite of passage that marks their entry into young adulthood, the transition to college. Although not all adolescents go on to higher education, statistics indicate the numbers continue to increase. A century ago, fewer than 5% of young adults attended college in the United States; today, more than 65% do (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). So, at least for a sizable subset of American youth, the college experience represents a major influence on their cognitive and social development. We can all picture the scenes: students piling out of cars driven by their anxious parents, descending on dorms at the beginning of the semester, bustling across cam- pus as fall’s first colors begin to tint the foliage, eagerly anticipating the educational challenges that await them in their classes, gathered late into the night talking and laughing with their newfound community of peers, relishing the heady freedom of young adulthood. If these images remind you of far too many movies you have seen, it may be because they have been overly romanticized, due in equal parts to advertising and to nostalgia. Below the attractive exterior these images suggest lies a core set of develop- mental challenges that await individuals at this time of life. For the most part, these tasks involve continuing the hard work of carving out an identity, now all the more pressing because of one’s status as an “adult.” Moreover, most of the work takes place outside the protected environments of home and high school, even though continuing attachments to family remain important, as we shall see in the next chapter. In this section, we will examine the changes in cognitive functioning that appear to characterize many young adults. Most of the research on young adult development has been done on college students and focuses on the kinds of change that one can  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 435 expect to find among people with the opportunity to continue their education beyond high school, delaying many other adult responsibilities. As we noted earlier, more than half of young Americans fall into this category. We know very little about cogni- tive change in those individuals who move directly from adolescence into the world of work. In the next chapter, we examine some of the special issues that may apply to this segment of our young people. Unquestionably, early adulthood is a time of great learning. Whether in college or on the job, young people are faced with being the “novices,” the “unknowledgeable,” or the “inexperienced” when they enter the world of adults, and they spend a great deal of time building their knowledge base and becoming more expert in particular domains of knowledge, such as computer science or philosophy or mechanics. Not surprisingly, at the end of four years of college, students perform better on tests of general knowledge than they do as entering students, and the majority judge them- selves to be “much stronger” than they were as first-year students in their knowledge of a particular field (Astin, 1993). Comparable change measures are not available for young people who enter the workforce after high school, but it seems reasonable to assume that after four years on the job, some of which may be in job training pro- grams, at least their knowledge of a particular field would have increased. On the whole, longitudinal research on intellectual change across the life span indicates that many skills (such as executive functions, as we noted earlier, spatial ori- entation abilities, and inductive reasoning skills) improve throughout young adult- hood, with measures of knowledge acquisition or breadth, such as understanding of verbal meanings, showing the most improvement in this time frame (Brysbaert, ­Stevens, Mandera, & Keuleers, 2016; Schaie, 2013). As long as opportunities to learn exist, the acquisition of knowledge seems to proceed rapidly during early adulthood. In later chapters, we will look in more detail at the typical progress of specific intel- lectual abilities throughout adulthood. Logical Thinking: Is There Qualitative Change? Is growth of knowledge and skill the only kind of cognitive change that we can expect to find in early adulthood? Or, as in childhood, does the nature of one’s thinking and problem solving change as well? Piaget’s analysis of structural shifts in children’s logi- cal thinking skills ends with the description of formal operational thought in the ado- lescent years (see Chapter 9). Formal operational thinking allows us to think logically about abstract contents. We can discover and understand the implications of relation- ships among pieces of information that may themselves be abstract relationships— such as proportions, for example. But many theorists have speculated that more advanced forms of rational thought are possible and emerge sometime in adulthood. Several schemes, many borrowing heavily from Piaget’s seminal work, attempt to describe the cognitive shifts that might occur in the adult years. Among these theo- ries are those that propose a stage of adult cognitive thought that has variously been called postformal or fifth-stage thinking, implying an extension of Piaget’s sequence of stages. Some of these theories actually elaborate a number of substages in the move- ment from formal operations to postformal thought. We will describe two of these the- ories—Perry’s (1970/1999) and Kitchener’s (Kitchener & King, 1981; King & ­Kitchener, 2015)—in detail in later sections to illustrate the possible processes of change in young adulthood. Some theorists disagree with the concept of a fifth stage of cognitive development. They often argue that the formal operational system of thinking is powerful enough to address any kind of logical problem. They are more inclined to see qualitative dif- ferences in adult problem solving and logical thinking not so much as an indication of a stage beyond formal operations but as a sign that the kinds of problems adults must solve are different from those that children are usually trained and tested on. As a result, adults must adapt their existing problem-solving skills to the new kinds of problems they face in adulthood (e.g., Labouvie-Vief, 2015; Schaie, 1977–1978). Part of what people may learn as they confront adult problems and responsibilities is the limits of their own problem-solving abilities. That is, they may grow in metacognitive 436 Chapter 11 understanding, recognizing that in some circumstances logical thinking will lead to a clear solution but that in other circumstances they must make decisions based in part on values, needs, and goals (e.g., Chandler & Birch, 2010; Kuhn, Zillmer, Crowell, & Zavala, 2013; Moshman, 2015). In sum, theorists disagree about whether adult problem solving represents a fifth stage in the development of logical thinking or is a reflection of the fact that life pres- ents adults with new problems. In the latter view, adults do not achieve a new rational system but learn to recognize the limits of their existing problem-solving systems and to evolve new strategies for applying them. Despite some disagreements, nearly all theorists agree that problem solving takes on a different look and feel in adulthood. In the following sections, we will summarize a few theoretical descriptions of adult logical thinking, and we will examine some of the research demonstrating that indeed, something changes as people face life’s grown-up challenges. Schaie’s View of Adults Adjusting to Environmental Pressures Schaie’s (1977–1978; Schaie & Willis, 2000) theory emphasizes the importance of new roles, needs, and responsibilities in determining adult intellectual functioning. Schaie does not argue for postformal thought but for shifts in cognitive functioning, or in the use of knowledge and skills, that are straightforward adaptations to the new demands that adults face at different times of life. According to Schaie, we can think of the child and adolescent years as a time when the individual is sheltered from much of life’s responsibilities. Schaie calls this the acquisition stage of cognitive development, when youngsters can learn a skill or a body of knowledge regardless of whether it has any practical goal or social implications. Practical problems and goal setting are monitored by parents and others who take on the responsibility for making decisions that will affect the child’s life course. The child has the luxury of learning for learning’s sake or problem solving just to sharpen her logical thinking skills. Many of the problems she confronts in this phase are those with pre-established answers. In young adulthood the protections of childhood rapidly recede and the individ- ual is faced with taking responsibility for her own decisions. The problems she must solve—such as how to maintain good health, what career path to choose, whom to vote for, or whether to marry—usually do not have pre-established answers. Many theo- rists have described them as ill-defined or ill-structured problems. Not only do they have no pre-established answers, but the “right” answer may be different depending on circumstances and on the perspective of the problem solver. Further, when we solve such problems we often do not have access to all the information that might be helpful. Young adults are in the achieving stage of cognitive development, when an indi- vidual must apply her intellectual skills to the achievement of long-term goals, care- fully attending to the consequences of the problem-solving process. Schaie assumes not that additional thinking skills are emerging beyond formal operational abilities but that previously acquired skills are being sharpened and honed on very different kinds of problems, such that the solution to one problem must be considered and adjusted relative to other life problems and goals. For example, an adult who is contemplating a divorce must contend with a number of issues: her future happiness, her economic status, and the well-being of her children, just to name a few. According to Schaie, each new stage of adult life brings new kinds of problems, with different skills more likely to play an important role in one stage than in another. In middle adulthood, the responsible stage, ill-defined problems are still the norm, but problem solving must take into account not only one’s own personal needs and goals but also those of others in one’s life who have become one’s responsibility: spouse, children, coworkers, members of the community. Schaie suggests that the greater impact of one’s problem solutions leads adults to become more flexible in their thinking and to expand their knowledge and expertise and use those qualities more widely than before. For people who take on supervisory functions at work and in the community, the extended impact of one’s problem solving is even greater than for oth- ers, and the responsible stage becomes the executive stage, requiring that one focus  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 437 heavily on learning about complex relationships, multiple perspectives, commitment, and conflict resolution. Such individuals must sharpen skills in integrating and hierar- chically organizing such relationships. People’s responsibilities usually narrow in early old age as their children grow up and retirement becomes an option. This is the reorganizational stage, when flexibility in problem solving is needed to create a satisfying, meaningful environment for the rest of life, but the focus tends to narrow again to a changed set of personal goals and needs. Practical concerns, such as planning and managing one’s finances without an income from work, require applying one’s knowledge in new ways. As people move further into their elder years, called the reintegrative stage, they MyLab Education need less and less to acquire new domains of knowledge or to figure out new ways of Video Example 11.2 Amanda is still figuring out her applying what they know, and many are motivated to conserve physical and psycho- adult roles and responsibilities. logical energy. Schaie suggests that elderly people are often unwilling to waste time Which stage of Schaie’s theory of on tasks that are meaningless to them, and their cognitive efforts are aimed more and development would you say best more at solving immediate, practical problems that seem critically important to their characterizes her? daily functioning. A legacy-leaving stage may also characterize people whose minds are sound but whose frailty signals that their lives are ending. Such people often work on establish- ing a written or oral account of their lives or of the history of their families to pass on to others. Consider Jean, who used her considerable organizational ability to con- struct a detailed genealogy to pass along to her only son. The activity gave her a sense of satisfaction, purpose, and meaning. Clearly, these goals require substantial use of long-term memory and narrative skill, more than problem-solving skills, but as Schaie points out, such accounts do require decision making, or the use of judgment, about what is important and what is not. This discussion of Schaie’s theory has involved describing cognitive functions beyond early adulthood. We will return to the later stages in Chapters 13 and 14. For now, Schaie’s depiction of cognitive functioning as heavily affected by the environ- mental pressures people face at different times of life should help set the stage for understanding other theories of young adult cognition. Most theories emphasize that advancements or changes in problem solving are embedded in the new experiences faced during adulthood. Schaie’s description of environmental pressures clearly is focused on typical middle-class experiences in Western cultures, and there are findings that support his stage view with Western participants. For example, a series of studies done with Swiss adults demonstrated that given the same ill-defined problems, younger adults focused more on strategies that maximized their personal gain (consistent with the achieving stage) and middle adults were more likely than young adults to use strategies that could maximize their contribution to a public good (consistent with the later stages of Schaie’s scheme) (Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014). Schaie would probably be the first to acknowledge that adults in other cultures, or in some North American cultural groups, might show different shifts in the polishing or use of cognitive skills through life, depending on the unique demands that their environments impose. For example, we noted earlier in this chapter that young Chi- nese working women rank being able to take care of their parents as very important for considering themselves adults; young women in the United States rarely rank this factor very high on their lists of criteria for judging adult status. Keep in mind as you read the following accounts of postformal thought that they are almost entirely based on observations of members of the majority culture in Western societies and that it remains to be seen whether these conceptions adequately characterize adult cognitive development in other cultures. Postformal Thought Many theorists argue that the realities of adult experience actually lead to new forms of thought (e.g., Basseches, 1984; Commons & Richards, 1984; Giri, Commons, & ­Harrigan, 2014; Mustakova-Possardt & Basseches, 2014; Sinnott, 1998; Sinnott, Tobin, Chrzanowska, & Hilton, 2017). The full flower of postformal thinking may not be real- ized until middle adulthood or even later, but the experiences of young adulthood 438 Chapter 11 contribute to the reconstruction of logical thinking. As we saw with formal operations, not all individuals will necessarily reach postformal operations. If they do, we can expect them to “skip in and out” of this type of thinking (Sinnott, 1998). Sinnott (1998; Sinnott et al., 2017) captures many of the features of postformal thinking described by others. For Sinnott, the essence of postformal thought is that it is relativistic thought: “[S]everal truth systems exist describing the reality of the same event, and they appear to be logically equivalent” (1998, p. 25). The knower recognizes both the consistencies and the contradictions among the multiple systems of truth, or systems of formal operations, and, depending on her goals and concerns, in many situ- ations she will make a subjective commitment to one; in other situations, she may seek a compromise solution that integrates some of each perspective, but will not lose sight of the inherent contradictions. For example, advanced study of a science often reveals that more than one theo- retical system can account for much of the data, although perhaps not all of it. Let’s use Sinnott’s example from mathematics to begin our demonstration: The knower may be aware that both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries exist and that each has contradictory things to say about parallel lines. In Euclidean geom- etry parallel lines never come together; in non-Euclidean geometry, parallel lines even- tually converge. These are two logically contradictory truth systems that are logically consistent within themselves and logically equivalent to one another. A mathematician bent on knowing reality must decide at a given point which system he or she intends to use, and must make a commitment to that system, working within it, knowing all along that the other system is equally valid, though perhaps not equally valid in this particular context. (Sinnott, 1998, p. 25) Here is a more personal example adapted from Basseches: Mary... and Judy are... mothers of daughters. Each mother has held a set of values which have guided her efforts to raise her daughter. Now, the daughters have grown up and each of them is rejecting many of her mother’s values. Mary is very troubled. She sees only two possible interpretations. If her values are right, she has failed as a parent... If her daughter’s values are right, the way Mary has lived her life is wrong... Judy... reasons that human values change... as old values interact with changing environmental circumstances... [I]n acting according to their values [people] change the world, and the changed world in turn leads to the development of new values... Judy says to herself: instead of assuming either that I am wrong or that my daughter is wrong, I can try to see what I can learn for my future life from her values borne of her experi- ence. I can also see how she has learned from my values and transformed them to keep up with the times. (Basseches, 1984, p. 1) Mary’s absolutism makes the conflict irreconcilable; Judy’s approach is relativistic and dialectical. She contextualizes the problem by taking an historical perspective, ­allowing her to truly accept that neither set of values is the only right way. In the behavioral sciences and the helping professions, we are quite familiar with the phenomenon of competing truth systems. For example, a counselor may be aware of multiple theories to account for snake phobias. One might be biologi- cally based, another based on assumptions about the symbolic meaning of snakes in a person’s life, and another a behavioral theory arguing that irrational fears are clas- sically conditioned. Suppose she understands the logic of each theory and knows that each is supported by a set of evidence. Yet, in a therapeutic situation, she must make a commitment to one of these systems of “truth” for the purposes of developing a therapeutic plan that will achieve relief for her client as quickly as possible. As Sin- nott argues, for her purposes that system then becomes her “true description of the world,” but if she remains aware of the inherent contradictions among the different systems and realizes that each has some claim on being true, her thinking has post- formal characteristics. Truth is relative, but one truth system may be more valid than another, depending on our goals. This example illustrates that descriptions of post- formal thinking have parallels in the descriptions of “reflective practice” ­presented in Chapter 1.  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 439 Chandler (1987; Chandler, Boyes, & Ball, 1990; Chandler & Birch, 2010) agrees that adults faced with the ill-defined problems of life begin to abandon the empty quest for absolute knowledge in favor of what amounts to a search for arguably good reasons for choosing one belief or course of action over another... an endorsement of the possibility and practicality of making rational commitments in the face of the clear knowledge that other defensible alternatives to one’s views continue to exist. (Chandler et al., 1990, p. 380) But Chandler and his colleagues disagree that such thinking actually is more advanced than formal operational thought. They are more inclined to see it as a result of self- reflection, a growing metacognitive awareness that is the product of “an ongoing effort to reflect on the status of the general knowing process” (p. 380) and to understand its strengths and its limits. Whether relativistic thinking is truly postformal is perhaps less important than when and under what circumstances it emerges. Let’s consider in greater detail two descriptions of cognitive change in the college years and the research in which they are grounded. In each of these theories, the final accomplishment is relativistic reasoning like that described by Sinnott. But each draws on data from studies of young adults to specify in detail how thinking might be restructured and why it is, especially for college students. They each describe a series of stages that we might consider sub- stages in the progression from early formal operational thought to a postformal kind of thinking. PERRY’S THEORY OF INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE COLLEGE YEARS William Perry’s (1970/1999) theory may be the oldest effort to examine the changes in thinking that characterize people as they transition to adulthood. It also remains perhaps the most authoritative, and other theoretical efforts tend to be quite similar (see, for example, King and Kitchener’s review of multiple approaches, 2015). For this reason, we provide you with some detail about Perry’s theory, and we follow that with a brief summary of one other similar position, that of Kitchener (King & Kitchener, 2015). Perry focuses on the cognitive and moral development of college students. He was a professor of education at Harvard and founder of the Harvard Bureau of Study Council, a counseling and tutoring center. Using many of Piaget’s ideas, Perry pro- posed a stage-based theory that depicts the typical intellectual and ethical transitions experienced by students in higher education settings, from absolute adherence to authority to beliefs founded on personal commitment. Perry’s theory examines the changes that occur over time in the structure of young adults’ knowledge, or, put another way, the changes in their expectations and assumptions about the world. Perry’s original study involved hundreds of volunteer Harvard and Radcliffe students from 1954 through 1963. The theory was constructed from extensive inter- views of students as they moved through their college years. In general, interview questions were open ended, such as “Why don’t you start with whatever stands out for you about the year?” (Perry, 1970/1999, p. 21), allowing students maximum free- dom to talk about their experiences. Initially, Perry considered the differences in stu- dents’ thinking or worldviews to be a function of their personality differences. It was only after careful reflection on many transcriptions that Perry and his team of raters began to consider the possibility of a developmental sequence. He states, “We gradu- ally came to feel that we could detect behind the individuality of the reports a common sequence of challenges to which each student addressed himself in his own particular way” (p. 8). Although Perry acknowledged that specific forms of knowing do vary across domains of knowledge (as we saw in our examinations of cognitive develop- ment in childhood), he believed it was possible to identify a dominant position or overarching form of thought for a given individual at a given time. Perry constructed a sequence of nine “positions,” or stages, ranging from extreme dualistic thinking to high levels of personally committed beliefs. What happens in between is the stuff of intellectual growth during the college years. Few students, if 440 Chapter 11 any, enter college at the first position, and few leave having achieved the ninth posi- tion. Like Piaget’s theory, Perry’s is a theory of continual movement and transition. Students “rest” for a time at each of the positions, but the dynamic clearly moves for- ward. From his perspective, the experience of a liberal arts college education accel- erates the growth process, particularly in a society that values pluralism, because students are invariably confronted with diversity of thought, values, and beliefs. To understand Perry’s ideas, let’s consider each of the positions and the three alternatives to growth (see Table 11.1 for a summary). Position 1: Strict Dualism. Strict dualism is really a downward extrapolation of higher stages, given that virtually no one enters college at this level. Strict dualistic thinking implies a rigid adherence to authoritarian views, a childlike division between in-group (the group that includes me, my family, and authorities who have the “right” idea) and out-group (the group that is “wrong” or has no legitimate authority). Indi- viduals in this stage simply never think to question their belief that authority embod- ies rightness. Because most adolescents have struggled with parents over autonomy issues and have experienced peers and teachers who, at the very least, have exposed them to various viewpoints, it is unlikely that many students would enter college with this extremely simplistic view of the world. Position 2: Multiplicity (Prelegitimate). Multiplicity (prelegitimate) is characterized by the student’s first encounters with multiplicity, that is, multiple ideas, answers to life’s questions, or points of view. Students now find themselves face to face with TABLE 11.1 Moving Toward Postformal Thought: Descriptions by Perry and Kitchener. PERRY FROM DUALISM TO RELATIVISM KITCHENER EMERGENCE OF REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT Dualism Position 1: Strict Dualism Stage 1 There is right vs. wrong; authorities know the truth. Knowing is limited to single concrete instances. Stage 2 Two categories for knowing: right answers and wrong answers. Position 2: Multiplicity (Prelegitimate) Stage 3 Multiple ideas exist; some authority knows what’s right. Knowledge is uncertain in some areas and certain in others. Position 3: Multiplicity (Subordinate) or Early Multiplicity Stage 4 Multiple perspectives are real and legitimate. Given that knowledge is unknown in some cases, knowledge is assumed to be uncertain in general. Position 4: Late Multiplicity Stage 5 A. Oppositional Solution: Either “authority is right” or “no one is right.” Knowledge is uncertain and must be understood within a context; can be B. Relative Subordinate Solution: Some opinions are more legitimate (better justified by arguments within those contexts. supported); outside guidance may be needed to learn how to evaluate and to reach this conclusion. Relativism Position 5: Contextual Relativism Stage 6 Respectful of differing opinions, but belief that ideas can be evaluated based Knowledge is uncertain; constructed by comparing and coordinating on evidence. ­evidence and opinions. Position 6: Commitment Foreseen Stage 7 Preference for a worldview begins to emerge despite awareness of legiti- Knowledge develops probabilistically through inquiry that generalizes across macy of other views. domains. Positions 7, 8, and 9: Commitment and Resolve “Flowering” of commitment; resolve to continue reflecting. SOURCES: Based on Kitchener, K. S., Lynch, C. L., Fischer, K. W., & Wood, P. K. (1993). Developmental range of reflective judgment: The effect of contextual sup- port and practice on developmental stage. Developmental Psychology, 29, 893–906; and Perry, W. G. (1970/1999). Forms of ethical and intellectual development in the college years: A scheme. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 441 uncertainty when exposed to a mass of theories, social experiences, and information. Their confusion is exacerbated because they lack the structure to accommodate the sheer volume of ideas. Despite their confusion, however, individuals at this stage maintain the belief that some “authority” possesses the ultimate truth or right answers. It is just up to the individual to find it. It is not uncommon, according to Perry, for stu- dents to sort through and organize confusing or contradictory information by creating mental dichotomies. For example, they may distinguish between “factual” courses, such as those in the sciences, and “vague” courses, such as those in the humanities. Students who pursue fields that are relatively clear-cut, at least at the early stages of study, may experience confusion when they later have to confront the multiplicity inherent in advanced levels of study. (Remember our examples of multiple truth sys- tems in advanced sciences.) As a student in one of our advanced classes complained on a course evaluation: This Psychology stuff is so interesting, but the Professor ruins it. She won’t tell us what the facts are. She throws theories at us, and maybe evidence that supports a theory— but then she usually says there is also some evidence against the theory, or evidence that fits another theory. It’s confusing and frustrating. Position 3: Multiplicity (Subordinate) or Early Multiplicity. In the stage of ­multiplicity (subordinate), the individual grudgingly acknowledges the reality and legitimacy of multiple perspectives. For example, it becomes more difficult to deny that reasonable people can differ in their perspectives on life, and people who hold different views are not so easily dismissed as being wrong. Some of the students’ beliefs in a just world––that the world is fair and people in it get what they deserve––are now reevalu- ated. Students realize that working hard on assignments or putting many hours into studying does not necessarily guarantee wished-for results. They may observe other students doing far less work than they do and getting better grades. They may be dis- tressed by their inability to understand “what the professors want.” They are nudged toward the sometimes painful realization that even their professors and other author- ity figures around them don’t have all the answers. They may also be distressed by the fact that their teachers continue to evaluate them, despite not having the “right” answers themselves. Position 4: Late Multiplicity. Late multiplicity was the modal position of Harvard and Radcliffe students in the original study in the latter part of their first year. Per- ry’s research identified two possible epistemologies or adaptations to the problem of ­multiplicity at this point in development. In effect, students at this stage now fully realize that even experts differ among themselves in regard to what is true. Students handle the realization in one of two ways. One response, identified as oppositional, is characterized by legitimizing multiplicity as one pole of a new kind of dualism. The right–wrong dualism of Position 1 moves to one end of a new continuum, with multi- plicity on the other end. Individuals taking this view of the world succeed in maintain- ing a dualistic either-or structure in their thinking. In other words, either “authority is right” or “all opinions are equally right.” One student in Perry’s study captured the essence of this position when commenting to the interviewer about his English course: “I mean if you read them [critics], that’s the great thing about a book like Moby Dick. Nobody understands it” (1970/1999, p. 108). The viewpoint that nobody possesses the truth, thus rendering all people’s opinions equally valid, can provoke students to irritation when they believe their work or the content of their ideas has been evaluated unfairly. The second alternative, called relative subordinate, is less oppositional. Students with this perspective begin to understand that some opinions are more legitimate than others, presaging the relativism of Position 5. The value of a perspective is now understood to be related to the supporting arguments and evidence for the position. However, the consideration of alternative points of view is still done primarily under the guidance of authority. A Perry interviewee reported that his first set of grades in a 442 Chapter 11 literature course was mediocre because he could not understand the kinds of thinking required: Finally I came to realize, about the middle of the second term, that they were trying to get you to look at something in a complex way and to try to weigh more factors than one, and talk about things in a concrete manner. That is, with words that have some meaning and some relevance to the material you were studying.” (1970/1999, p. 112) Often students receive explicit guidance that helps them weigh opinions or compare and contrast ideas. Instruction such as this fosters the kind of metacognition—aware- ness of how rational arguments are constructed and weighed—that is the foundation of later relativistic thinking. Position 5: Contextual Relativism. The move to Position 5, contextual relativism, repre- sents a major achievement in intellectual development. The first four positions are vari- ants of a basic dualistic structure. The later positions represent a qualitatively different way of looking at the world. Kneflekamp (1999) reports on a common misunderstanding of Perry’s theory, which confuses the “anything goes” quality of late multiplicity with the concept of relativism. He recalls what Perry himself used to say: “Relativism means rela- tive to what—to something—it implies comparison, criteria, and judgment!” (pp. xix–xx). The individual can no longer accept the fiction that everyone’s ideas are as good as everyone else’s. Although she respects the rights of others to hold diverse views, the student at this stage possesses sufficient detachment to “stand back” on her own and consider ideas and values more objectively than before. In a very real way, the student develops the habit of thinking that relies on some standard of evidence that is appropriate to the domain in question. Students’ new analytic abilities allow them to appreciate the merits of diverse perspectives and to find convincing elements in multiple points of view. Thinking rela- tivistically, or thinking about knowledge in context, becomes more habitual. Authority figures are seen more as colleagues than they were before, as people grappling with the same conflicts that beset students, only with more experience in dealing with those conflicts. They are figures no longer to be opposed but to be respected, as this third-year college student from the study illustrates: I think when I was younger, when people in general are young, there’s [sic] so many problems that they feel they don’t have to face, and that’s why they’re indifferent to them. Either it’s something that somebody else—the hierarchy, like the family—wor- ries about, or it’s something in the future that isn’t any problem yet. And then you, when you mature you begin facing these problems for yourself, and looking at them, and then the family just becomes a help to people... with more, with a lot of experi- ence. To help you, and not to take the brunt of the problem or something that’s your worry. (Perry, 1970/1999, p. 138) Position 5 also represents a watershed stage for religious belief, the point of demarca- tion between belief and the possibility of faith. No longer can an individual’s religious belief rest on blind adherence to authority. Real faith, Perry purports, has been tested and affirmed in the context of a relativistic world. This implies that those who hold viewpoints other than one’s own may be wrong, but no more wrong than oneself, given that the student now rejects the idea of absolute truth. With some effort, indi- viduals come to respect and tolerate those who hold different viewpoints even while they struggle to clarify their own beliefs. Position 6: Commitment Foreseen or Anticipation of Commitment. With c­ ommitment foreseen, we hear echoes of Erikson’s discussion of identity development (see Chap- ter 9). Thinking at this stage incorporates a measure of moral courage, as the indi- vidual begins to affirm what it is she believes in, all the while knowing that reason will never provide absolute proof that her ideas or perspectives are right or are better than those of others. Commitments to a set of beliefs, to a field of study or career, to relationships, and so forth, like the constructed commitments we discussed in Chapter 9, can take place “after detachment, doubt, and awareness of alternatives have made  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 443 the experience of choice a possibility” (Perry, 1970/1999, p. 151). This way of thinking incorporates not only respect for diverse ideas and understanding of their rationales but also emerging, personally chosen, preferences for worldviews. One student cap- tures this element of Position 6: It seems to me that so much of what I’ve been forced to do here, this taking of two sides at once, just suspends my judgment. There is a value in it, in seeing any perspective, or any one particular facet of, of a problem. But there’s also a value in, in being able to articulate one side more than another. (p. 157) One notices a general trend in thinking toward personal meaning making or reflective thinking. Positions 7, 8, and 9: Commitment and Resolve. Perry discusses Positions 7 (­initial commitment), 8 (multiple commitments), and 9 (resolve) together. Taken as a group, they suggest a flowering of the commitments anticipated in Positions 5 and 6. Changes in thinking are more qualitative than structural. According to Perry, 75% of students in the study had a level of commitment at Positions 7 or 8 at graduation. Despite its place at the end of the line, Position 9 does not imply a static resolution of existential conflict. On the contrary, it characterizes a state of courageous resolve to continue the work of reflecting on one’s commitments throughout adulthood. Perry also accounted for individuals who refrain from taking the intellectual chal- lenge necessary for growth through these stages. Fallback positions include temporiz- ing, retreat, and escape. Temporizing refers to delaying movement to the next stage. Escape characterizes a movement back to relativism when the demands of commit- ment prove too taxing. Retreat occurs when individuals revert to dualistic thinking in times of stress in order to seek the intellectual security of absolute right or wrong, a position that is unavailable at the level of committed relativism. Perry characterized his theory and the research that supported it as focused on intellectual and ethical development, and his work does pertain to these things. How- ever, it is more fundamentally a study and characterization of epistemological devel- opment. That is, it examines young adults’ increasingly complex conceptions of where knowledge comes from, and of the nature of truth and reality (Erdynast, Chen, & Ikin, 2016). As such, it has relevance for how students might approach learning and prob- lem solving in any domain (social, ethical, scientific, and so on) as their understanding of the nature of knowledge changes. Some researchers have used Perry’s framework to explore the connection between students’ beliefs about knowledge and their approach to learning. For example, in an early study, Ryan (1984) found that relativists were more successful in their college classes because they tended to use more constructivist approaches to studying course material. They paid attention to context, constructed meaningful interpretations of textual information, and summarized main ideas. Dual- ists were more likely to focus on memorization of factual information, in keeping with their belief in “right” versus “wrong” information. These differences were significant even when the effects of scholastic aptitude were eliminated statistically. Some more current work, although not necessarily inspired by Perry’s theory spe- cifically, is consistent with the idea that as college students become more relativistic in their views of knowledge, their learning strategies change. For example, in a series of three studies, Yoder, Mancha, and Smith (2014) found that students in the later years of college are more willing to attend to information that violates their own beliefs than first year students are. The researchers asked students to complete a reading on political issues. On a later test, first year students remembered better any information from the reading that was consistent with their own beliefs. Older students, however, remembered more information that was inconsistent with their own views, suggesting that they focused especially on understanding ideas that were different from their own as they read. Problem-solving strategies also change as thinking becomes more relativ- istic. For example, relativistic thinkers are more likely than dualistic thinkers to provide legitimate evidence to support their thinking and problem solving (Kuhn, 1992, 2001; Kuhn & Franklin, 2006). Dualists also take a more narrow view of problem-solving 444 Chapter 11 tasks, breaking them down into unrelated, discrete parts and ignoring some impor- tant aspects. Relativists are more likely to consider the whole problem, processing and taking into account all of its components before attempting a solution (Wilkinson & Maxwell, 1991). Relativists are also more likely than dualists to approach problems by evaluating evidence and its sources critically, rather than accepting claims made “authoritatively” (McGinnis, 2016). Reasoning about moral dilemmas in the Kohlberg tradition (see Chapter 7), how- ever, actually seems to regress somewhat for some young adults as they begin to prog- ress through Perry’s stages (Eisenberg et al., 2002; Padilla-Walker, 2015). ­Kohlberg (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987) at first thought this might be due to the stress of the tran- sition to college, but newer analyses suggest that it may be a function of early rela- tivistic thinking: a kind of “over-reaching” tolerance that makes some young adults hesitate to commit to their own values in approaching a moral dilemma (Padilla- Walker, 2015). KITCHENER’S MODEL OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT As we noted earlier, and as helpers know all too well, many problems of adulthood are ill defined. An ill-defined problem has neither one acceptable solution nor one agreed- on way to solve it. Should a talented athlete stay in college or accept an attractive job offer? Should a young woman pursue a high-powered career that will leave little room in her life for marriage and child rearing? How can a young adult deal with the pres- sures of both academics and her social life? Moreover, how do helpers deal with the messy issues that come to them on a daily basis? Kitchener and her associates (Kitchener & King, 1981; King & Kitchener, 2015) MyLab Education have proposed a seven-stage theory outlining the development of reflective judg- Video Example 11.3 ment, how people analyze elements of a problem and justify their problem solving Many problems in adulthood are (see Table 11.1). They presented individuals with a standard set of ill-structured prob- ill-defined. Such is the case with lems from the social and physical sciences and questioned them about the reasoning college student Laura who faces they used in coming to conclusions about the problems. Like Perry, these researchers ­difficult decisions as she seeks a found a predictable, sequential progression that moved from a belief in the existence career path. of absolute, fixed certainty to a kind of contextual relativism. For Kitchener, different stages of thinking can be differentiated on the basis of three dimensions: certainty of knowledge, processes used to acquire knowledge, and the kind of evidence used to justify one’s judgments. As you can see from Table 11.1, the early stages (1 through 3) are characterized by a belief in the existence of certainties and the use of personal justification (“This is just the way it is”) or reliance on authori- ties for guidance. Individuals in the early stages also tend to use personal observation as evidence of the rightness of their judgments. Individuals in the middle stages (4 and 5), similar to Perry’s multiplists, perceive knowledge as uncertain. They believe in the supremacy of personal opinion and tend to make judgments based on idiosyncratic kinds of reasoning. Those in the later stages (5 through 7) resemble Perry’s contextual relativists in that they tend to make judgments based on a set of rules or logic in com- bination with personal reflection. For example, one reflective judgment problem concerned whether certain chemi- cals in foods, such as preservatives, are good or bad for us. In the following prototypi- cal example of a Stage 5 response to such a problem, you can see that the speaker sees knowledge as uncertain and contextually dependent; but she does not yet have a sense that evidence can be weighed probabilistically (as in Stage 7): I am on the side that chemicals in food cause cancer, but we can never know without a doubt. There is evidence on both sides of the issue. On the one hand there is evidence relating certain chemicals to cancer, and on the other hand there is evidence that cer- tain chemicals in foods prevent things like food poisoning. People look at the evidence differently because of their own perspective, so what they conclude is relative to their perspective.” (Kitchener, Lynch, Fischer, & Wood, 1993, p. 896) Some research demonstrates that reflective judgment is related to level of educa- tion (Dunkle, Schraw, & Bendixen, 1993; Kitchener & King, 1981) as well as to the kind  Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood 445 of training one has received (Lehman, Lempert, & Nisbett, 1988; Papathomas & Kuhn, 2017). Graduate students, for example, reason at higher levels than college undergrad- uates, and graduate students in psychology, a discipline that emphasizes probabilistic reasoning, show higher levels of proficiency on such tasks than graduate students in chemistry, medicine, or law. Specific kinds of training or support appear to improve skills in reasoning and judgment. In one study, individuals from middle through grad- uate school were provided with prototypic statements like the one quoted above, with each statement modeling successively higher levels of reflective judgment, and then they were asked to explain the reasoning in the prototypic statement. The results indi- cated that after such modeling and practice, participants’ own levels of reasoning on such problems had advanced. One classic study illustrates that reflective judgment in social and personal issues tends to lag behind problem solving in domains that do not relate to one’s own per- sonal concerns (Blanchard-Fields, 1986). In this study, participants ranging in age from 14 to 46 were presented with two accounts of each of three events. One event that had little personal relevance for most people was an account of war (the Livia task) by two opposing parties (see Kuhn, Pennington, & Leadbeater, 1982, for a full description of the task). The remaining two events were characterized as “a visit to the grandpar- ents” and “the pregnancy,” and both events were rated by participants as emotionally involving. In the first of these, a teenage boy and his parent each present a story about a time when the boy was required to accompany his parents on a visit to his grandpar- ents. The two stories are inconsistent in emotional tone and in many details (see Box 11.1 for the full text of the competing accounts). In the second emotionally involving event, a woman and a man each take a different stance on the woman’s pregnancy, she favoring an abortion, he against an abortion. For each of the three events, study participants were asked to explain what the conflict was about and what happened. They also responded to probe questions such as “Who was at fault?” and “Could both accounts be right?” The participants’ understanding and analysis of the events were scored based on six levels of reasoning, combining features of Perry’s (1970/1999) and Kitchener and King’s (1981) levels of cognitive maturity. Performance on the Livia task was better at earlier ages than performance on the more emotionally involving tasks. Performance continued to improve on all tasks from adolescence to young adulthood and from young adulthood to middle adulthood. The following are examples of performance for these three age groups on the emo- tionally involving “visit to the grandparents” event (from Blanchard-Fields, 1986). Level 2. This was the average level of response for adolescents on the two emo- tionally involving events. It is close to an absolutist conception of reality. There’s a lot more said by John of what they did and they had an argument and the parents did not say it like—how he talked, and that he wanted to be treated like an adult. It seems more right because I don’t like the parents’ talk. (p. 327) Level 3. This level was about average for young adults in this sample. They rec- ognized that different perspectives appear valid, but they tended to cling to the possibility that there may be an absolute truth, even in such ill-defined situations. Yes [they could both be right]. I think you’d have to have a third person not involved emotionally with either party. They’d be able to write without feeling, the facts, just what happened. (p. 327) Note that “just what happened” suggests one correct interpretation of events. Level 4. This level was about average for middle-aged adults. They were not bi- ased toward one side or the other, and the idea that more than one truth might exist was intimated, but there was still a strong sense that one can identify an essential similarity or truth despite the different perspectives. I think the accounts, as far as the actual events, are pretty much the same. The impor- tant differences are in the presentation... the important differences are in their 446 Chapter 11 perceptions of what was going on. The actual “this happened” are the same, but the interpretation of it is different. (p. 328)