SUMMARY

Biosocial Development

1. Emerging adults usually have strong and healthy bodies. Death from disease is rare, although violent deaths are not uncommon.

2. The sexual-reproductive system reaches a peak during these years. The sex drive is strong and orgasms frequent. Problem-free conception, pregnancy, and birth are more likely between ages 18 and 25 than earlier or later, although most current emerging adults postpone childbearing until age 25 or later.

3. Willingness to take risks is characteristic of emerging adults. This allows positive behaviors, such as entering college, meeting new people, volunteering for difficult tasks, or finding new jobs. It also leads to destructive actions, such as unprotected sex and drug use.

4. Extreme sports are attractive to some emerging adults. Attempting to understand this, developmentalists posit that the risk of injury and even of death can be thrilling at this age and that boredom is to be avoided.

Cognitive Development

5. Adult thinking is more advanced than adolescent thought in that it is more flexible, better able to coordinate the objective and the subjective. Some scholars consider adult thinking a fifth stage of cognition called postformal thought.

6. The flexibility of young-adult thought allows people to reexamine stereotypes from their childhood. This is particularly important in decreasing stereotype threat, which may impair adult cognition if left unchecked.

7. Worldwide, there are far more college students than there were a few decades ago. Everywhere the students’ backgrounds and current situations are more diverse than formerly.

8. Although a college education has been shown to have health and income benefits, observers disagree as to how, or even whether, college improves cognition. Evidence suggests that it does, but perhaps not as much as in earlier generations.

Psychosocial Development

9. Identity continues to be worked out in emerging adulthood. Vocational identity is particularly difficult in today’s job market, with emerging adults likely to change jobs often.

10. Personality traits from childhood do not disappear in emerging adulthood, but many people learn to modify or compensate for whatever negative traits they have. Personality is much more plastic than people once thought or experienced.

11. The need for social connections and relationships is lifelong. In earlier times and in some cultures currently, emerging adults followed their parents’ wishes in seeking marriage partners. Today’s youth are more likely to choose their own partners and postpone marriage.

12. Cohabitation is the current norm for emerging adults in many nations, although not in others. Some research finds that this increases marital and childrearing problems later on, but that may vary by culture and cohort.

13. Family members continue to be important to emerging adults: Parental support—financial as well as emotional—may be more crucial than in earlier times.