Young adulthood

• Stress may lead young adults to

  Engage in risky behaviors, eat unhealthily, have poor quality of sleep
• Emotion-Focused Coping


  Manage emotions by refusing to think about an issue or reframing the event in the positive light
• Problem-Focused Coping


  Involves addressing an issue head-on and developing action-oriented ways of managing and changing a bad situation
• Premenstrual Syndrome


  Disorder that produces physical discomfort and emotional tension for up to 2 weeks before menstrual period
• Premenstrual Syndrome


  • Response to monthly surges of female hormones
  • More typical in women in their 30s or older
• Dysmenorrhea


  Caused by contractions of the uterus which are set in motion by prostaglandin
• Infertility


  Inability to conceive a baby
• Causes of infertility in women

  • Failure to produce ova
  • Mucus in the cervix
  • Disease of the uterine lining
• Reflective Thinking


  Active, persistent, and careful consideration of information or beliefs
• Reflective Thinking


  1. Continually question facts

  2. Draw inferences

  3. Make connections
• Frequently engage in critical thinking
• At approx. 20-25 years of age, the brain forms new neurons, synapses, and dendritic connections, and the cortical regions that handle higher-level thinking become fully myelinated
• Postformal Thought


  Characterized by the ability to deal with inconsistency, contradiction, and compromise
• Postformal Thought


  • Draws on intuition and emotion as well as logic to help people cope with situations such as social dilemmas
  • Acknowledges that there may be more than one valid way of viewing an issue and that the world is made up of shades of gray
• Componential Knowledge


  Analytical abilities
• Experiential Intelligence


  Original thinking, experience-based
• Contextual Intelligence


  Knowing your way around
• Tacit Knowledge


  Inside information, know-how, "hacks", not formally taught or openly expressed; commonsense knowledge of how to get aged
• Tacit Knowledge includes


  • Self-management
  • Management of tasks
  • Management of others
• Emotional Intelligence


  Refers to four related skills: the abilities to perceive, use, understand, and manage or regulate emotions to achieve goals
• Postconventional Morality


  People became more capable of fully principled moral reasoning, and they made moral decisions on the basis of universal principles of justice
• Culture affects the understanding of morality
• As students gain more experience and think more deeply, they begin to realize that much knowledge and many values are somewhat relative
• Commitment within Relativism


  Students decide for themselves, ideally, what they want to believe
• Whether a person completes college may depend not only on motivation, academic aptitude, and preparation, and ability to work independently, but also on social integration and social support
• People seem to grow in challenging jobs
• Substantive Complexity


  The degree of thought and independent judgement it requires – and a person's flexibility in coping with cognitive demands
• Spillover Hypothesis


  Cognitive gains from work carry over to nonworking hours
• Intimate relationship


  Requires self-awareness, empathy, the ability to communicate emotions, resolve conflict, and sustain commitments
• Friendships during young adulthood are much less stable because people relocate more frequently
• They tend to center on work, sharing confidence and advice
• Women have more intimate friendships than men
• Men are more likely to share information and activities
• Fictive Kin


  Treated as family members despite a lack of blood relationship
• Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

  The way love develops is a story. The loves are its authors, and the story they create reflects their personalities and their conceptions of love.
• Three elements of love

  • Intimacy - emotional element, involves self-disclosure, which leads to connection, warmth, and trust
  • Passion - motivational element, based on inner drives that translate physiological arousal into sexual desire
  • Commitment - cognitive element, the decision to love and make the relationship work (exclusive or marry)
• Nonlove


  No intimacy, passion, nor commitment
• Closeness


  • Understanding
  • Emotional support
  • Affection
  • Bondedness
  • Warmth
• Casual Interactions


  e.g., friends, acquaintances
• Liking


  Intimacy present