Page 118 - Understanding Psychology

How does the media portray
adolescents?
Many television shows feature teenagers as the main characters. How are these teenagers featured? What are their concerns and how do they handle problems?
Procedure
1. Watch a television show that features teenagers as the main characters.
2. List the problems presented in the show and how the teenager attempted to resolve them.
3. Have students role-play the show’s protag- onists and debate alternative solutions.
Analysis
1. In a report, describe other ways the teen- ager might have solved the problems or issues that he or she faced.
law is fair or just. They believe that the laws must change as the world changes and are never absolute. For example, an individual who has progressed to Stage 5 might ignore a law to save a human life. Individuals who reach Stage 6 are also concerned with making fair and just decisions. However, they differ from Stage 5 individuals in that they formulate absolute ethical principles, such as the Golden Rule, that they have worked through for themselves. They believe such moral laws apply to everyone, cannot be broken, and are more
important than any written law.
Reaching higher levels of moral thinking
2. Which of the developmental tasks of adolescence was the teenager in the television show mastering?
3. How well did the television teenager’s solutions compare with those of your classmates?
involves the ability to abstract—to see a situa- tion from another’s viewpoint. That is why such moral development tends to occur in adoles- cence, when individuals gain the capacity for formal operations thinking. Not all adolescents who display such thinking simultaneously show higher levels of moral reasoning, though. In fact, only about 1 in 10 do (Kohlberg & Tunel, 1971). Thus, formal thought, while necessary for higher moral development, does not guarantee it. Interestingly, by the mid-1980s, Kohlberg began to question whether differentiating between Stages 5 and 6 was necessary. He concluded that only one stage—com- bining the key features of both stages—adequately identified the most advanced form of moral development
and thinking.
Overall, psychologists agree that a person’s moral development
depends on many factors, especially the kind of relationship the indi- vidual has with his or her parents or significant others. Evidence shows that during high school, adolescent moral development does not progress much. During college, however, when the individual is away from home more and experiencing different cultures and ideas, more pronounced changes in moral development occur.
IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
The changes adolescents undergo affect many facets of their exis- tence, so it is hardly surprising that cumulatively they have a shaping influence on personality. Psychologists who have studied personality changes in adolescence have focused on the concept of identity. One psychologist in particular, Erik Erikson, has shown that the establishment of identity is key to adolescent development. His theory of how individu- als arrive at an integrated sense of self has inspired a great deal of argument.
See the Skills
Handbook, page 622, for an explanation of design-
ing an experiment.
104 Chapter 4 / Adolescence