11.4 Summary

Biosocial Development

1. Emerging adults usually have strong and healthy bodies. Death from disease is rare.

2. The sexual-reproductive system reaches a peak during these years, but most current emerging adults postpone child-bearing. The results include both increased use of contraception and higher rates of sexually transmitted infections and viruses.

3. Willingness to take risks is characteristic of emerging adults. This allows positive behaviours, such as entering college or university, meeting new people, volunteering for difficult tasks, and finding new jobs. It may also lead to destructive actions, such as unprotected sex, drug use, and an increase in injuries.

4. Extreme sports are attractive to some emerging adults, who find the risk of serious injury thrilling.

Cognitive Development

5. Adult thinking is more flexible and better able to coordinate the objective and the subjective. Some scholars consider this development a fifth stage of cognition, referred to as postformal thought.

6. Whether or not a fifth stage exists, there is no doubt that maturation of the prefrontal cortex allows more advanced thought.

7. The flexibility of young-adult cognition allows people to re-examine stereotypes from their childhood. This may decrease stereotype threat, which impairs adult performance if left unchecked.

8. Worldwide there are far more college and university students, especially in Asia and Africa, than there were a few decades ago, as massification has become an accepted goal.

9. Everywhere, students’ backgrounds and current situations are more diverse, which advances postformal thinking. Practical, vocational skills are also valued.

Psychosocial Development

10. Identity continues to be worked out in emerging adulthood. Ethnic identity is particularly important in multi-ethnic cultures, not only for people of mixed and minority backgrounds, but also for those in the majority.

11. The current economic situation makes achieving vocational identity even more problematic than a decade ago. The average emerging adult changes jobs several times.

12. Personality traits from childhood do not disappear in emerging adulthood, but many people learn to modify or compensate for whatever negative traits they have. New experiences—such as moving away from home and going to college or university—allow some plasticity in personality.

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

14. Cohabitation is the current norm for emerging adults in many nations. Nonetheless, marriage to partners of similar backgrounds still seems to be the goal.

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