 Drug abuse is more common in college or university students than in the same age group not

in post secondary education.

Cognitive Development:
 Piaget believed the fourth stage of development continued throughout life (Formal operational
thought). Recent scholars think adult thought differs from adolescent thought in that it is more
practical and flexible.
 Postformal thought: A proposed adult stage of cognitive development; beyond adolescent
thinking in that it is more practical, flexible, and dialectical. Characterized by problem finding,
increased openness to ideas, less concern with absolute rights and wrongs.
Combining Emotions and Logic:
 Postformal thinkers are less impulsive than adolescents, and more practical, creative, and
imaginative.
 Approach to problems is more flexible, comprehensive, and uses forethought, notes difficulties,
and anticipates issues instead of denying, avoiding, or procrastinating.
 Prefrontal cortex not fully mature until early 20’s. New dendrites and new neurons grow
throughout adulthood; logic skills improve until emerging adulthood then stay steady as
analytic thought becomes established.
Countering Stereotypes:
 Fear that one may be misread to confirm another person’s stereotype of the person’s group.
 Fear of stereotypes may discourage an emerging adult from doing things like going to university.
Effects of Higher Education:
 Massification: The idea that encouraging higher education could benefit everyone and
significantly increase the number of emerging adults in post secondary institutions.
 Post secondary education improves health and wealth; increases earnings after graduation.
 Each year of education is associated with a lower rate of obesity.
 Thinking progresses over nine levels of complexity over the four years leading to a bachelor’s
degree. However, this growth in thinking has lowered over the last two decades, because students
today study less and academic expectations are reduced.
Chapter 12:

Chapter 13: Psychological Development

Personality Development in Adulthood
 Personality is composed of a mixture of genes, experiences, and contexts and includes a person's
unique attitudes and personality
 Erikson’s theory of development included three stages in adulthood: intimacy vs isolation,
generativity vs stagnation, integrity vs despair
 He saw adulthood as the continuation of identity seeking
 Abraham Maslow believed adult development did not relate to chronological age, looked at the
hierarchy of needs based on 5 sequencing stages: physiological, safety, love and belonging, success
and esteem, self actualization
 No current theorist sets chronological boundaries for stages of adult development
 Midlife crisis: a supposed period of unusual anxiety, radical self-examination, and sudden
transformation that was once widely associated with middle age (35-50) but has more to do with
developmental history rather than chronological age
 There are 5 clusters of personality traits called the big five:
 Openness: imaginative, curious, artistic, creative, open to new experiences