Chapter 2 Adolescence in Theory and Research Theories about adolescence adolescence happens to living beings not to rocks or chairs adolescence comes after childhood and before adulthood adolescents prefer strong sensations such as loud music bright colors and spicy food adolescents have very unstable emotions up one minute down the next theory when we have a number of statements or ideas about a subject that fit together logi cally Biological and Evolutionary Theories Ernst Haeckel believed that the developing fetus recapitulates or goes through stages that parallel the evolutionary history of its species G Stanley Hall extended his theory of recapitulationism Recapitulationism and Adolescents Hall saw adolescents as recapitulating the psychology of early civilization They were be coming sensitive and influenced by the people around them That s why it was so important to surround them only by wholesome influences This time period was the ages of power when the major European powers and the U S ruled the rest of the world His theory is not taken seriously to this day but his ideas that adolescence is a period of storm and stress is still shared by many people Another theory says that adolescents are at the mercy of raging hormones Evolutionary Psychology Hall insisted that adolescence had to be understood from a standpoint to evolution this formed evolutionary psychology evolutionary psychology an approach that tries to understand how current characteristics and behaviors may have been influenced by evolutionary forces reproductive fitness the Darwinian principle that genetic characteristics that make the sur vival of one s offspring more likely will gradually become more common in the population biological determinism the idea that what we do is set or determined by our biological or genetic makeup Psychoanalytical Theories Sigmund Freud founder the chief theorist of the psychoanalytic approach for him the underlying goal of everything we do is to gratify one of the basic drives we the life oriented drive the life force that is responsible for such drives as hunger are born with libido thirst and sex psychosexual stages according to Freud changes in the source and target of the sex drive during childhood and adolescence that create the oral anal phallic latency and geni tal stages phallic stage has the Oedipus complex the period in which a child develops a desire to gain sexual possession of the opposite sex parent and to eliminate the rival parent of the same sex in girls its referred to as the Elektra complex It causes the child to fear a punishment com ing from the same sex parent Around 6 years old the latency stage in which psychosexual conflicts are mostly kept unconscious The sex drive is change into an urge to acquire physical mental and social skills Then comes the genital stage where the physical and hormonal changes take place Childhood fantasies and conflicts reemerge unconsciously Ana Freud description of how adolescents use defense mechanisms defense mechanisms were unconscious tools for controlling sexual and other dan gerous psychological impulses One is said to be intellectualization which involves taking con crete conflicts and recasting them as abstract issues that obscure the passions fueling them Erik Erikson ons sexual drive pays more attentions to the effects of the child s social and cultural experiences and less psychosocial stages for Erikson distinctive ways that developmental changes in the child adolescent or adult interact with the social environment to make particular issues more salient Pg 34 Cognitive Theories Piaget derstanding of the world standing of the world said the we do not simply absorb information but we actively work to construct an un cognitive stages for Piaget different ways of thinking about and building an under the last stage of cognitive development is the stage of formal operations the stage at which adolescents gain new resources fro logical and abstract thought Usually begins around the age of 12 Stages were sensorimotor pre operational concrete operations and formal operations pg was particularly interested in the way social relationships affect the progress of thinking 35 Lee Vygotsky abilities information processing he ways information enters the person s cognitive system gets processed and is stored for future use metacognition the ability to be aware of one s own thinking processes and to develop more effective ways of using them Learning and Social Cognitive Theories operant conditioning a basic form of learning in which the likelihood of a behavior being repeated is affected by its consequences Theory of B F Skinner social cognitive theory an approach that sees observing what others do and what happens to them as important ways of learning Focuses on the ways our thoughts an actions are affected by our social environment Social and Anthropological Theories what its later effects are likely to be social groups are powerful influences in determining how adolescence is experienced and continuous societies in which children gradually and peacefully take on adult roles Discontinuous societies in which there are abrupt stressful transitons from adoles cence to adulthood Ecological and Developmental Systems Theories Urie Bronfenbrenner Ecological theory Bronfenbrenner s view of development which focuses on the ways an adolescent s social settings interact to influence development Pointed out that each level of social group in which the developing person functions can be thought of as a system that influences and is influenced by systems at other levels developmental systems theory Lerner s approach which emphasizes the ways the ado lescent plays an active role in dealing with social systems For example skin color Finding Out About Adolescence the Scientific Approach social sciences fields of investigation and knowledge such as psychology sociology and anthropology that use the scientific method to study questions about people and their societies The scientific approach is about an attitude toward knowledge a method for testing and adding to knowledge A scientific Attitude a scientific attitude requires you to view things with an open mind approach these ideas with skepticism A scientific Method hypothesis testing identify the problem outline the relevant theory use the theory to generate a hypothesis gather data that bear on the hypothesis analyze the data draw the conclusions revise the theory Types of Research the major