Page 116 - Understanding Psychology

rationalization: a process whereby an individual seeks to explain an often unpleasant emotion or behavior in a way that will preserve his or her self- esteem
answer to a hypothetical question like “What would the world be like if people lived to be 200?” He or she can entertain such hypothetical possi- bilities in a way that a young child cannot. This ability expands the ado- lescent’s problem-solving capacity. A teenager who discovers that her car’s engine has a knock can consider a number of possible causes and systematically test various adjustments and auto parts until she finds the root of the problem. This is the same ability that a scientist must have to conduct experiments.
With comprehension of the hypothetical comes the ability to under- stand abstract principles and deal with analogies and metaphors. Not only is this capacity important for studying higher-level science and mathe- matics, but it also leads the adolescent to deal with abstractions in his or her own life such as ethics, conformity, and phoniness. It allows for intro- spection—examining one’s own motives and thoughts. One adolescent noticed, “I found myself thinking about my future, and then I began to think about why I was thinking about my future, and then I began to think about why I was thinking about why I was thinking about my future.”
These new intellectual capacities also enable the adolescent to deal with overpowering emotional feelings through rationalization. After fail- ing a test, for example, an individual may rationalize that it happened “because I was worried about the date I might be going on next week.” An 8-year-old is too tied to concrete reality to consider systematically all the reasons why he or she might have failed.
Do all adolescents fully reach the stage of formal operations thinking at the same age? As you might suspect, just as there are variations in physical maturity, so there are variations in cognitive maturity. In gener- al, the rate of mental growth varies greatly both among individual ado- lescents and among social and economic classes in this country. One study showed that less than half of the 17-year-olds tested had reached the stage of formal operations thinking (Higgins-Trenk & Gaite, 1971).
Differences have also been noted among nations. Formal opera- tions thinking is less prevalent in some societies than in others, probably because of differences in the amount of formal edu- cation available. People who cannot read and write lack the tools to separate thought from concrete reality, and hence they cannot reach, or do not need to reach, more advanced levels of thinking
(Dasen & Heron, 1981).
The change in thinking patterns is usual-
ly accompanied by changes in per- sonality and social interactions as well. For example, adolescents tend to become very idealistic. This is because, for the first time, they can imagine the hypothetical—how things might be. When they com- pare this to the way things are, the world seems a sorry place. As a result, they can grow rebellious.
Figure 4.5 Introspection
Adolescents display an egocentrism—the tendency to be overly concerned with the sudden changes in their lives. Usually this period of intense introspection decreases as adolescents become young adults. Why does formal operations thinking bring about introspection in adolescents?
102 Chapter 4 / Adolescence