Anthropology Discussion post
There are several biological and cultural characteristics that identify the genus Homo.
What makes Homo biologically different from the rest of the fossils we have seen? Use
this interactive tool
to uncover the differences (the tool requires Flash and runs better in Firefox).
What evidence of culture do we see in the genus Homo? Tools? Hunting techniques Shelters? Burials? Art? What does this mean for understanding what it means to be human?
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Chapter Eleven
Being with Others: Forming
Relationships in Young and
Middle Adulthood
11.1 Relationships
Love Relationships
• Sternberg’s three basic components of love
– Passion
– Intimacy
– Commitment
• Couples are happier when each feels the
same types of love to a similar degree
• The longer a relationship lasts, the lower its
intimacy and passion, but the greater its
commitment
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Love Through Adulthood
• Infatuation: characterizes early stages of
romance when passion is high, but intimacy
and commitment are lower
– Higher divorce rates in couples who marry
based primarily on infatuation
• Assortative mating: selecting one’s partner
based on similarity across many dimensions
– Homogamy: degree to which people are
similar; greater when couples meet through
school or a religious setting
Love Through Adulthood:
What Heterosexual Women Want
• Women choose masculine-looking men for
shorter-term relationships and feminine-
looking men for long-term relationships
• Certain traits are universally desirable
– Physical attractiveness, especially for men
– Being a good provider, especially for
women
– In both genders: love, mutual attraction,
dependability, emotional stability, kindness,
and understanding
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Childhood Attachment Patterns and
Adult Romantic Relationships
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Developmental Forces and Love
Relationships
• Love is a function of biopsychosocial forces
• Love is a distinct neurological emotion system,
with different stages of love involving different
neurochemicals
• Erikson: mature love is impossible without a
capacity for intimacy
11.3 The Family Lifecycle
Family Life Cycle
• Early adulthood
– Leaving home
–
Marriage
– Parenthood
• Middle adulthood
– Launching children
• Late adulthood
– Retirement
– Death of spouse
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Leaving Home
• Average age of leaving increased over last 50
years
• More than 50% leave, then return briefly
• Parents highly committed to helping children
move into adult roles
Marriage
• Studies show the median age at which
couples marry has been rising for the past
several decades
• Women who marry under the age of 20 are:
– Three times more likely to divorce than
women who marry in their 20s
– Six times more likely to divorce than those
who marry in their 30s
What is a Successful Marriage, and
What Predicts It?
• Marriages are likelier to succeed when:
– Both partners are relatively mature
• this may be why marriages in one’s early
20s or younger tend to fail
– The couple has similar values and interests
– Each partner contributes equitably
(exchange theory)
– Couples are honest and committed, they
trust and consult each other, and they
make decisions jointly
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Do Married Couples Stay Happy?
• Vulnerability-stress adaptation model: marital
satisfaction is a function of the couple’s ability
to deal with stress, given its vulnerabilities
and resources at each particular point in time
• Marital and cohabital satisfaction is highest in
the beginning, falls until children begin
leaving home, and rises again in later life
• When dependence is more equal, marriage
tends to stay strong and close
Keeping Marriages Happy
• Enduring marital satisfaction is likelier when
couples:
– Are forgiving, understanding, flexible,
adaptive, and available for, and interested
in, the other
– Keep the romance alive and express love
– Confide in each other; communicate
constructively and positively
– Share spirituality and/or religious beliefs
Deciding Whether to Have Children
• 50%+ of U.S. pregnancies are unplanned
• Considerations:
– Finances
– Personal values
– Religious values
• Childless couples have a higher standard of
living and greater marital satisfaction
• Societal attitudes toward childless couples
have improved since the 1970s
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The Parental Role
• Couples are having fewer children and
waiting longer to have them
• Older parents are more at ease, affectionate,
sensitive, and supportive
• More than 70% of women with children under
18 are employed outside the home and still
perform most of the childrearing tasks
• Men who become fathers in their 30s spend
more time caring for their preschool children
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Chapter Ten
Becoming an Adult: Physical,
Cognitive, and Personality
Development In Young Adulthood
10.1
Emerging Adulthood
When Do People Become Adults?
• Quarterlife crisis: similar to a midlife crisis, but
occurs in one’s 20s
– A relatively new term for a period of self-
exploration, search for meaning, and
adjustment to daily hassles or life
challenges
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Emerging Adulthood
• No definitive criteria for marking when one
becomes an adult, especially in the West
• Emerging adulthood: a relatively new term
referring to the period when people are not
adolescents but are not fully adults
– Encompasses the years between late
adolescence and early 30s
– Social and demographic trends since the
1970s have created this new
developmental period
Role Transitions Marking Adulthood
• Role transitions: new responsibilities and
duties that mark movement into the next
developmental stages
• Rites of passage: important rituals marking
initiation into adulthood
Erikson
• Intimacy vs. isolation: major psychosocial
conflict during young adulthood (Erikson’s 6th
stage)
• Intimacy involves creating a shared identity
with another
• Stronger sense of one’s own identity is
needed to achieve this intimacy
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10.2 Physical Development & Health
Growth, Strength, and Physical
Functioning
• Height is at its tallest during young adulthood
• Physical strength, coordination, and dexterity
in both sexes peaks in the late 20s and early
30s
• Most senses remain acute through to middle
age or old age
– Hearing begins to decline in the late 20s,
especially for high-pitched tones
10.3 Cognitive Development
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How Should We View Intelligence in
Adults?
• Most theories are multidimensional, though
there is disagreement as to the dimensions
• Baltes et al.’s three dimensions
– Multidirectionality: some aspects improve
while others decline during adulthood
– Interindividual vari
ability
: patterns of
change vary between people
– Plasticity: abilities can be modified under
the right conditions
Primary – and Secondary Mental
Abilities
• Primary mental abilities: groups of related skills
organized into hypothetical constructs
– Number
– Verbal meaning
– Inductive reasoning
– Spatial orientation
– Word fluency
• Secondary mental abilities: clusters of related
primary abilities used as a framework for
describing intelligence’s structure; difficult to
measure directly
Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence
• Fluid and crystallized intelligence are
secondary mental abilities
• Fluid intelligence: being a flexible, adaptive
thinker, who can make inferences, and
understand concepts’ relationships
– Declines throughout adulthood
• Crystallized intelligence: knowledge of facts,
definitions, language, etc., acquired by life
experience
– Improves throughout adulthood
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Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence
Integrating Emotion and Logic in Life
Problems
• In postformal thinking, decision-making and
problem-solving emphasize:
– Change and context-dependent principles
instead of conformity and context-free
principle
– Pragmatics of the situation, emotion, and
social facets more than logic alone
– The relative rather than absolute nature of
rules and norms
Going Beyond Formal Operations:
Thinking in Adulthood
• Postformal thought
• Reflective judgment
– Prereflective reasoning
– Quasi-reflective reasoning
– Reflective reasoning
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10.4 Personality in Young Adulthood
Creating Scenarios and Life Stories
• Life-span construct: one’s unified sense of
the past, present, and future
• Scenario: expectations of how one’s future
life will play out
– Helps people formulate a game plan and a
way to track progress
• Social clock: a personal timetable tagging the
time or age by which future goals or events
are to be completed
McAdams’s Life-Story Model
• Life story: a personal narrative organizing
past events into a coherent sequence
reflecting one’s identity, ideology, and goals
– Agency and communion are themes
– Attitudes toward one’s story are conveyed
through emotions (e.g., optimism)
– Begins forming in late adolescence
– From middle age onward, reshaped to form
generativity
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Possible Selves
• Possible selves: representations of one’s
hoped-for-selves and feared-for-selves
• With increasing age, important possible
selves concern personal matters more than
family ones
• Young and middle-aged adults are more
optimistic about achieving hoped-for-selves
• Much older adults perceive the self as
remaining stable
– Physical health is an important feared self
Personal Control Beliefs
• Personal control beliefs: extent to which
performance depends on one’s own effort or
ability rather than outside forces
– Greatly affects personality, social, health,
intellectual, and career outcomes
• Results of research on development of personal
control beliefs are inconsistent
• Control beliefs vary depending upon the domain
in which they are studied (e.g., intelligence
versus health)
Personal Control Beliefs: Domains
• Examples of domain-specific findings:
– People’s perceived control of marital
happiness increasing with age
– One’s development declining with age
• One domain-nonspecific finding is that
satisfaction is greater for:
– Younger adults who attribute success to
their effort
– Older adults who attribute success to their
ability
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Personal Control Beliefs: Primary
and Secondary Control
• Primary control: modifying the external
environment to fit one’s needs and goals (e.g.,
asking a teacher for tutoring)
• Secondary control: modifying one’s cognitions,
goals, or behavioral standards (e.g., attributing
failure on a test to task difficulty instead of ability)
• Primary and secondary control operate in parallel
during first half of life; primary declines in midlife