Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Positive Developments During the Transition to Adulthood

Item

Title

Positive Developments During the Transition to Adulthood

Author

Noam, Gil G.

Triggs, Bailey

Research Area

Social Interactions

Topic

Family Relationships

Abstract

The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than 10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7‐ to 30‐year‐olds, an over 20‐year age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in this area.

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Identifier

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extracted text

Positive Developments during the
Transition to Adulthood
GIL G. NOAM and BAILEY TRIGGS

Abstract
The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we
traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the
seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both
earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than
10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7- to 30-year-olds, an over 20-year
age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This
essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern
conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a
developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in
this area.

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
When considering the foundations of how we define adolescence through
the life span, several key theorists inform how we approach the topic today.
Research has evolved from G. Stanley Hall’s view that adolescence was a
time of “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904), to Erik Erikson’s proposal of a human
development model for the entire life span (Erikson, 1950), to James E. Marcia’s expansion of Erikson’s proposal to emphasize the importance of a coherent sense of identity and an engaged meaning-making process (Marcia, 1966).
Though a popular criticism of youth today, the concept of a prolonged adolescence is not a new one. Daniel Levinson claimed it takes a young man
about 15 years to fully immerge into an adult (Levinson, 1978), but it took
another decade for developmental psychologists and other social scientists
to distinguish the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood further by
introducing the concept of emerging adulthood.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

“EMERGING ADULTHOOD”: BETWEEN ADOLESCENCE
AND ADULTHOOD
Researchers have pointed to shifting educational, financial, and parenting
priorities that have given rise to phase of late adolescence or “emerging
adulthood” that occurs between ages 18 and 25 (Arnett, 2000). James E.
Côté suggested that emerging adults are pursuing personal and individual
fulfillment, and that the transition to adulthood is now more vague and
insecure. He tackled this problem from a sociological perspective, suggesting that mass culture and profit-driven industries have promoted a culture
of individualism (Côté, 2000), and that young people develop strategic
identities in order to maximize their identity capital and make their goals
easier to accomplish (Côté, 2010).
DEMOGRAPHICS OF EMERGING ADULTHOOD
The stage of “emerging adulthood” accounts for young people who are
not considered adolescents but lack the traditional markers society places
around adulthood such as workforce participation, independence from
parents, committed romantic relationships and family building. For many,
those milestones are pushed into the late 20s or 30s and beyond. Census
data shows 98.1% of adolescents aged 12–17 are unmarried and 95.2%
live with at least one parent (US Bureau of Census, 2015a). Of course, the
demographics switch significantly in the age range of 30–34. By that age
64.2% have married, 78.7 have become parents, and only 6.4% attend school
(US Bureau of Census, 2015b). Emerging adulthood and the phases that
lead to the adult statistics are complex but show that before reaching age 30,
young adults are consistently less committed to the significant relationship,
parenting, and career.
SUBJECTIVITY OF ADULTHOOD
The Bureau of Census data only gives us a small picture of some of the criteria that answer the question, “Am I really an adult?” Research on emerging
adulthood shows that even with all these milestones completed, many people still resist the “adult” label. Being an adult is as much a state of mind
and self-identity as it is a clearly defined role in society. In his research on
emerging adulthood, Arnett outlines the top criteria people use when determining whether they are willing to label themselves as an adult: accepting
personal responsibility, making independent decisions and attaining financial independence (Arnett, 2000). Clearly, changing demographics are not the
only reason young adults do not feel like they have established themselves
psychologically.

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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What this exposes is that the life cycle in its phasic, age-graded way is very
confusing and quite individualized. The formativeness of different phases
has lost its clarity compared to when Erikson introduced his concepts in the
1950s as the options to be an adult have expanded, making it difficult to create
descriptions and norms out of different phases. From positive psychology,
the concept and acceptance of “emerging adulthood” has now normalized
this delay of adulthood responsibilities. Many factors at play support this
shift: impacts of labor market, difficulty of high school and college graduates to get jobs, parents’ willingness to support children longer, as well as a
reduced stigma around living with parents once the formal education period
has ended. With these shifts comes an increased difficulty to keep normative
life cycle models intact, even though there is a continuing interest by textbook authors and in some developmental research to keep a temporal and
developmental order alive.
THE NEED FOR NEW THINKING
But what do we do when many of the traditional categories, such as identity formation and adult responsibility, do not clearly match the phasic and
age-graded stages? The emerging adult does not yet have a firm identity, as
such an identity tests itself in commitments and is not only a cognitive and
affective set of internal priorities of the self, and the young adult stage of intimacy and committed love, so well described by Erikson, is very hard when all
other aspects of adulthood are postponed. These problems of conceptualization are not only because of the extension of adolescence into the 20s, creating
a hybrid construct, but it also reveals the problems of traditional stage theories. As cultural and societal norms have shifted, the stepwise progression
has not been easily held up. Feminists in the 1990s critiqued Erikson for
putting the adolescent identity stage before the young adult intimacy stage
(Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991). They argued that for many
women, identity gets formed through intimate relationships and friendships.
Erikson, of course, knew that as well, but his concept of identity was linked
to autonomy, search, and self-discovery, and his ideal notion was that people need a sense of fidelity formed through positive identity before being
able to truly give away part of the self in order to create ongoing and lasting intimacy. However, he was never quite able to convince those who had a
very strong argument that identity can be shaped and discovered through the
merging and differentiating of people (pairs or groups) trying to find themselves.
There is also the issue of social class and race as well as cultural contexts.
Many of the emerging adulthood descriptions are class based, as they were
in Erikson’s time when the prolonged identity search, the protected time of

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

moratorium, was partly tied to the privilege of a college education. Arnett’s
analysis of national data to see if his emerging adult theory applied across
social classes confirmed that. While there were many commonalities across
emerging adults of all social classes, there were differences in the surveys of
those in the lower classes who reported feeling more depressed and lacking
access to financial support for education (Arnett, 2015).
In addition to education support, moving back home during the transition period between attending school and obtaining self-sustaining employment is only an option for emerging adults with families that have space in
their home and enough financial resources to sustain another family member beyond adolescence. Certainly, unemployment is even harsher for young
people of color, but it is not clear whether it is a phenomenon of emerging
adulthood or one of adulthood without opportunities and the challenges of
poverty. There has been some effort to explore the experience of emerging
adulthood from a racial/ethnic minority perspective (Syed & Mitchell, 2013)
but research is still limited in this area.
Given these difficulties in mapping progressions of psychosocial development that hold true for many people of a population, the general trend in
psychology has been to dismiss stages of development. Following the Piaget
years of cognitive development that shaped a whole generation of developmentalists from the 1960s to the 1990s and produced many stage theories of
morality, social cognition, self and personality, the Vygotskian paradigm and
other cultural psychologies emerged, some with a strong process orientation
(zone of proximal development) without specific content and structure of
normative accomplishment to be reached at specific ages and others plain
hostile toward any developmental thinking that would generalize beyond
the specific conditions of a culture or a group.
We are now in a “poststage period” of theorizing without being able to
fully let go of what is clearly a relevant phenomenon with huge practical
importance: The continued recognition that cognitive, emotional, relational,
physical, brain, and other developments unfold, not all chaotically and individual by individual but with some systematicity. It is also hard to argue
that such systematicity has some age chronological connections, at least at a
correlational level (age/skills/capacities/propensities). Even if these maps
are still controversial, it is hard to imagine a pediatrician to function without
them (e.g., physical growth charts). Stages and phases are needed to simplify, to organize, and to create some yardsticks that can be used in education,
health, and all professions. Yet they do not function well across cultures and
in societies that allow for highly individualized choices and pathways. Take
the example of motherhood and generativity: Having a baby and taking care
of him or her when the mother is 13, 23, 33, 43, or even 53 (and in some
exceptional cases, 63), covers a span of more than 50 years of development.

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It is hard to imagine making a developmental stage out of generativity that
corresponds with other dimensions of development, such as cognitive development, employability, and relational maturity (McAdams, de St Aubin, &
Logan, 1993). This complexity, of course, is not settled by creating a new
developmental stage with blurry boundaries in both directions of adolescence and adulthood. In the following section, we describe a new approach.

A NEW LOOK AT DEVELOPMENT: DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
THEORY (DPT) ALSO KNOWN AS THE CLOVER MODEL
The developmental process theory (DPT) or Clover Model assumes four
domains, each reflecting a particular kind of development (Malti & Noam,
2008). These are the four leaves of the clover—action, assertion, belonging,
and reflection. It is not hard to make out of the 4 dimensions 8, 10, or
even 40 as the asset model of Peter Benson and his colleagues have done
(Benson, 2003). Our goal was not to divide and subdivide but to seek the
very minimum dimensions necessary to understand the needs and desires
of children and adolescents and to provide them with the right support
and learning opportunities that engage and satisfy these needs. What we
found through research as well as clinical and classroom observations is that
action, assertion, belonging, and reflection are those four dimensions. We
call these dimensions and their interactions the Clover Model because they
do not follow each other sequentially but are each present at all points of
development. The leaves are not distinct entities; rather, they overlap like a
Venn diagram.
Every individual exercises aspects of each of these four developmental processes and needs to balance them, but each leaf takes prominence for specific
age groups. People move along a continuum prioritizing the task of one leaf
before another, but that priority does not mean that the other dimensions are
not applicable. In early adolescence, for example, the belonging processes
become essential. However, the physical needs of the action leaf, the issues of
assertion (e.g., of will and trying to make an impact), and reflection about self
and the world are also active. These establish a new balance with belonging
as the preeminent developmental frame. This model preserves a developmental point of view while broadening the scope from a stagewise progression of sense-making (Piaget, 1972), or life tasks (Erikson, 1994), or a singular
focus on relationships (Bowlby). Body, will, attachment, and cognition are in
continuous exchange. They evolve together and apart, maintaining a tension
between progression and regression.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ACTION
The child in early childhood is highly action-oriented, though this tends to
be slightly more so for boys than girls. Young children are very concerned
with their own perspective and with actively and physically engaging in the
world. However, mastering impulses and emotions, and satisfying immediate needs exist lifelong. Many positive, athletic experiences, mindfulness,
and so on are meaningful and pleasurable at all phases of life, but typically
the coordination of body and impulses becomes more coordinated (updated)
throughout childhood and adolescence.
ASSERTION
Exploring their world is paramount for children, and to do this, they assert
themselves, their wants and needs, and interests (now more verbally than
via action). They can appear oblivious to the needs of others because they do
not yet have the capacity to fully coordinate multiple perspectives. Learning to do so will require asserting themselves and dealing with the reactions of others. Knowing a youth may be expecting hostility from others and
understanding aggressiveness in terms of striving for assertion may help a
mentor normalize a mentee’s aggressiveness (Malti & Noam, 2009), and be
more hopeful that the mentor can provide a corrective emotional experience.
Again, assertiveness, also called agency, is a lifelong set of processes, accomplishments, and risks.
BELONGING
With a secure attachment, a youth will explore the world with relative ease,
and if he or she has successfully achieved mastery during the industrious
explorations of talents, interests, and skills of middle childhood, both of
these experiences will dovetail with the emergence of the mutual-inclusive
perspective-taking skills that typically appear during middle school (sometimes earlier for girls). The result is a concern for belonging and a sense
of allegiance with like-minded and affirming peers. A sense of belonging
becomes all important, such that peers take on magnified importance,
sometimes trumping family connectedness as the youth’s primary source
of social affirmation. Of course, this can result in an overly conforming
approach to relationships for beyond adolescence. Again, attachment and
belonging issues exist from early childhood to death, but the form they take
are different at different ages (e.g., being a son vs being a father).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

7

REFLECTION
Teens who are able to take a perspective on their friendships, cultural groups,
or families can begin to reflect on ways in which they differ from others, in
values, potential, interests, and needs. A deeper degree of identity exploration can ensue with the full force of mutual-inclusive perspective taking
being applied to self-discovery. Reflection, which is hampered by anxious
attachment but helped by the security of solid attachment style, results in
exploration beyond the comfortable boundaries of the collective views of
peers, families, and other familiar people. Knowing this, a mentor can help
the youth who wants (and now is able) to engage in deeper reflection to consider opportunities the youth has never considered. While we used to view
this work as marking adolescence, we now know that creating meaning and
identity happens throughout life.
As should be clear from this brief overview, at each position on the Clover,
other leaves can take prominence for a brief or extended period or in specific relationships or contexts, and the process of one leaf may be needed to
bridge two others. For example, the transition from the belonging to reflection position may require an altogether new type of assertion to chart new
educational territories or career terrain. Normative changes that occur from
middle childhood to late adolescence mean that adolescents typically have
different needs for belonging, assertion, action, and reflection than children.
From a developmental perspective, it also means that significant relationships need to foster child and adolescent needs and thereby fill a unique
function in the youth’s life.
DPT AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
We now want to explore how DPT expresses itself in the emerging adult
years. We posit that the four Clover Model domains exist from the beginning
of life until the end: it is the balance between them that changes. At different phases of life, an updating can and should happen for every domain. This
rebalancing and updating is what we term developmental process. Much of this
work is conceptual with clinical information and developmental observations as the basis. It also represents a heuristic to review selectively important
literature on this developmental phase. Thus, we use our model to integrate
existing literature that has grown impressively.
ACTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
In emerging adults, an action orientation may manifest as struggles with
self-management and impulse control. Studies have found that emotion
regulation strategies are more limited for this age group than in older age

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

groups (Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014). There is also an expectation that
this age group will be more adventurous and risk-taking than other age
groups. In fact, research on the association between sensation seeking and
risk behaviors in emerging adults has found a connection between sensation seeking and various aspects of well-being among college-attending
emerging adults (Ravert et al., 2013). Those who sought out high-intensity
sensations were associated with low psychological well-being, where those
emerging adults who were seeking novelty had positive associations with
well-being and were not significantly associated with risky drinking, drug
abuse, or sexual behavior (Ravert et al., 2013, p. 24).
The rise and ubiquity of social media and the instant gratification that
having nearly every product, person, and idea at one’s fingertips provides
an easy vehicle for impulsive behavior focused on fast gratification. While
the digital world creates great opportunities for emerging adults to find
and share their voice, exposure to certain types of media can also have
negative outcomes on this age group, including body image, sexual, and
prosocial behavior (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, & Howard, 2013). At this age,
there is also a strong drinking and drug abuse culture that can undermine
young adults’ ability to manage their lives. An unmoored sense of adult
identity may contribute to increased substance abuse as well. Emerging
adults who self-reported as “feeling in-between” positively correlated with
substance-related problems (Smith, Bahar, Cleeland, & Davis, 2014).
Neuroscience research is supporting the view that the adolescent brain is
not fully matured in the 20s and that reasoning and language skills are still
developing. Furthermore, MRI studies have shown that impulsivity is higher
and emotion control lower than in full adulthood (Johnson, Blum, & Giedd,
2009; Rubia et al., 2000).
ASSERTIVENESS AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Developing a strong sense of self and having the confidence to communicate
that to others is an important component of emerging adulthood in Western
societies. As relationships with family and friends mature, emerging adults
have more opportunities at this time in life to express agency in their choices
and interpersonal interactions (Bynner, 2005). As with our previous discussion of action orientation, technological advances and the globalization of the
economy have given this rising generation of emerging adults more opportunities to choose than ever before. As Barry Schwartz examines in his book
The Paradox of Choice, the vastness of today’s choices can be as crippling as it
is liberating, particularly for those who apply internal pressure to make the
best choices, what Schwartz refers to as maximizers as opposed to satisficers
(Schwartz, 2004).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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BELONGING AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Research has shown that the formation of secure attachments in infancy can
have an impact on brain development in early adulthood. In a 2015 paper,
Christina Moutsiana, Tom Johnstone, and their team shared the findings of
their 22-year longitudinal study, where they found a connection between
insecure attachment style in infancy and greater amygdala volumes in early
adulthood (Moutsiana et al., 2015). The finding is notable because higher
amygdala volume in the brain has been connected to anxiety, depression,
and difficulty processing emotions (Baur, Hänggi, & Jäncke, 2012; Holmes
et al., 2012). The family relationship is not just critical because of its impact on
brain development, emerging adults often return to the family after receiving
education due to financial constraints and a more attachment orientation in
modern families. One study found that “establishing nonconflictual relationships with parents was associated with markers of young adulthood status
and attainment of developmental tasks,” and positive, guilt-free relationships, specifically with the father that maintain a “close enough” distance
are particularly effective in helping young adults find their independence
(Shulman & Ben-Artzi, 2003, p. 225).
In addition to adjusting to a more adult relationship with parents, this phase
is seen as a time to experiment with romantic relationships and gain experience before making a commitment. For many who experienced the divorces
in their parents’ generation, marriage is seen with skepticism and either unrealistic or something to be decided on after a long trial period. This age group
also has a culture of sexual risk-taking, with one study finding as many as
40% of respondents reporting a recent casual sex partner at age 22 (Lyons,
Manning, Longmore, & Giordano, 2015).
REFLECTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Reflecting and meaning-making are key components of the identity searching that takes place in emerging adulthood. The meaning-making system is
not just formed in adolescence. It is often tied to occupation, which is a struggle when that occupation is still undefined for so many in that age group and
job opportunities are limited.
For many, religion plays a role in the meaning-making process. In 2002,
Arnett surveyed 140 emerging adults to better understand what role religion
played in their process of meaning-making. He found that the influence of
family socialization in religion faded with the passage of time, with many
emerging adults priding themselves on their independence from their parent’s belief system, viewing it as a good and necessary part of their development (Arnett & Jensen, 2002). The rejection of their parents’ beliefs does
not mean emerging adults are entirely faithless. They may pick and choose

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the morals and ethics that appeal to them, viewing their beliefs as a personal,
individual choice rather than participation in a collective organization. However, more research with larger samples is needed.
Identity is not just an individual process but also a collective concept with
a cohort effect—what it means to be a “millennial,” for example. Each generation forms templates of meaning, identity, and choice. Being indecisive
about who you are is becoming the new norm for this age group. When
Arnett, Ramos, and Jensen surveyed emerging adults ages 20–29 to better
understand their ideological views, they found a distinct pull between the
ethics of autonomy and community, which they relate to a “struggle, not yet
fully articulated, over the ideological direction of their generation” (Arnett,
Ramos, & Jensen, 2001, p. 78).
In summary, DPT can help organize the growing field of study regarding
strengths and vulnerabilities in the emerging adult years. The extension
of making firm life commitments into the third decade of life allows for
more exploration and action orientation and the development of voice and
choice during the 20s. The belonging needs are met in part by closer relationships with parents, often economically dependent and living in the same
household, or establishing intimacy through groups and casual intimate
encounters rather than through one-on-one committed relationships that
lead to early establishments of families. Finally, the meaning-making related
to establishing an identity is taking longer, moving from an adolescent task
to one reaching well into young adulthood.
OUTLOOK
In this final section, we turn to the issue of positive development and mental
health. DPT is more than a rewrite of stage theory to encompass a dynamic
balance between the four adaptable elements that can become updated
throughout life. What we have found is that a productive balance across
domains is also a good description of positive mental health. A person who
lives positively in his or her body, expresses wishes and desires without too
much inhibition, is engaged in empathic and intimate relationships and has
meaning in life, and has more than Freud’s “love and work” or a positive
sum of functional checklists that attest to mental health. What does that
mean for the young adult?
Overcoming adolescent impulsivity and college drug and alcohol use
is a good start. However, of course, having begun to embrace a healthy
nutritional and exercise lifestyle that is prevention-oriented is also important. Beginning to express positions and perspectives as a participating and
informed citizen is part of a productive emerging adulthood. Exploring and
possibly committing to an intimate relationship, to rework the attachments

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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of the original family and to build lasting friendships mark real progress.
Moreover, finally, to establish a more coherent meaning system and identity
that give purpose to life is a very large task and a central accomplishment
of the young adult years. It is important to further these strands of development and to research them to better understand and support the young
people moving from one transitional period—adolescence—to the next one
leading up to adulthood.
REFERENCES
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.
Arnett, J. J. (2015). Does emerging adulthood theory apply across social
classes? National data on a persistent question. Emerging Adulthood.
doi:10.1177/2167696815613000.
Arnett, J. J., & Jensen, L. A. (2002). A congregation of one: Individualized religious
beliefs among emerging adults. Journal of Adolescent Research, 17(5), 451–467.
Arnett, J. J., Ramos, K. D., & Jensen, L. A. (2001). Ideological views in emerging adulthood: Balancing autonomy and community. Journal of Adult Development, 8(2),
69–79.
Baur, V., Hänggi, J., & Jäncke, L. (2012). Volumetric associations between uncinate
fasciculus, amygdala, and trait anxiety. BMC Neuroscience, 13(1), 437–446.
Benson, P. L. (2003). Developmental assets and asset-building community: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In R. M. Lerner & P. L. Benson (Eds.), Developmental assets and asset-building communities: Implications for research, policy, and practice
(pp. 19–43). New York, NY: Springer.
Bynner, J. (2005). Rethinking the youth phase of the life-course: The case for emerging
adulthood? Journal of Youth Studies, 8(4), 367–384.
Côté, J. E. (2000). Arrested adulthood: The changing nature of maturity and identity. New
York, NY: New York University Press.
Côté, J. E. (2010). The role of identity capital in the transition to adulthood: The individualization thesis examined. Journal of Youth Studies, 5(2), 117–134.
Coyne, S. M., Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Howard, E. (2013). Emerging in a digital world
a decade review of media use, effects, and gratifications in emerging adulthood.
Emerging Adulthood, 1(2), 125–137.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society (1st ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1994). Identity: Youth and crisis (7th ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education (1st and 2nd ed.). New York, NY: D.
Appleton & Co.
Holmes, A. J., Lee, P. H., Hollinshead, M. O., Bakst, L., Roffman, J. L., Smoller, J.
W., & Buckner, R. L. (2012). Individual differences in amygdala-medial prefrontal
anatomy link negative affect, impaired social functioning, and polygenic depression risk. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(50), 18087–18100.

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Johnson, S. B., Blum, R. W., & Giedd, J. N. (2009). Adolescent maturity and the brain:
The promise and pitfalls of neuroscience research in adolescent health policy. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45(3), 216–221.
Jordan, J., Kaplan, A., Miller, J., Stiver, I., & Surrey, J. (1991). Women’s growth in connection: Writings from the Stone Center. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Levinson, D. J. (1978). The seasons of a man’s life. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Lyons, H. A., Manning, W. D., Longmore, M. A., & Giordano, P. C. (2015). Gender
and casual sexual activity from adolescence to emerging adulthood: Social and life
course correlates. Journal of Sex Research, 52(5), 543–557.
Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (2008). The hidden crisis in mental health and education:
The gap between student needs and existing supports. New Directions for Youth
Development, 2008(120), 13–29.
Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (2009). A developmental approach to the prevention of adolescent’s aggressive behavior and the promotion of resilience. International Journal
of Developmental Science, 3(3), 235–246.
Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558.
McAdams, D. P., de St Aubin, E. D., & Logan, R. L. (1993). Generativity among young,
midlife, and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 8(2), 221–230.
Moutsiana, C., Johnstone, T., Murray, L., Fearon, P., Cooper, P. J., Pliatsikas, C., …
Halligan, S. L. (2015). Insecure attachment during infancy predicts greater amygdala volumes in early adulthood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56(5),
540–548.
Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development, 15(1), 1–12.
Ravert, R. D., Kim, S. Y., Schwartz, S. J., Weisskirch, R. S., Zamboanga, B. L., Ham,
L. S., … Bersamin, M. M. (2013). The association between sensation seeking and
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Development, 54(1), 17–28.
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… Bullmore, E. T. (2000). Functional frontalisation with age: Mapping neurodevelopmental trajectories with fMRI. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(1),
13–19.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice. New York, NY: Ecco.
Shulman, S., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Age-related differences in the transition from
adolescence to adulthood and links with family relationships. Journal of Adult
Development, 10(4), 217–226.
Smith, D. C., Bahar, O. S., Cleeland, L. R., & Davis, J. P. (2014). Self-perceived emerging adult status and substance use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(3), 935–941.
Syed, M., & Mitchell, L. L. (2013). Race, ethnicity, and emerging adulthood retrospect
and prospects. Emerging Adulthood, 1(2), 83–95.
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data/cps2015.html

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US Census Bureau. (2015b). America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015:
Adults (A table series). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/
data/cps2015A.html
Zimmermann, P., & Iwanski, A. (2014). Emotion regulation from early adolescence
to emerging adulthood and middle adulthood age differences, gender differences,
and emotion-specific developmental variations. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 38(2), 182–194.

GIL G. NOAM SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Prof. Gil G. Noam, EdD, PhD, (Habil.), is the founder and director of The
PEAR Institute: Partnerships in Education and Resilience at Harvard University and McLean Hospital. An associate professor at Harvard Medical
School focusing on prevention and resilience, Dr. Noam trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst in both Europe and
the United States. Dr. Noam has a strong interest in translating research and
innovation to support resilience in youth in educational settings.
BAILEY TRIGGS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Bailey Triggs, MS, is the project manager of product design and development at The PEAR Institute at Harvard University and McLean Hospital.
Prior to her work at Harvard, Bailey served as the communications director
of the Children’s Safety Network, a national injury and violence prevention
resource center funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration
of the US Department of Health and Human Services, centered at the Education Development Center. She holds a masters degree in public relations
from Boston University.
RELATED ESSAYS
Learning Across the Life Course (Sociology), Jutta Allmendinger and Marcel
Helbig
Rent, Rent-Seeking, and Social Inequality (Sociology), Beth Red Bird and
David B. Grusky
Shadow Education (Sociology), Soo-yong Byun and David P. Baker
Peers and Adolescent Risk Taking (Psychology), Jason Chein
Neighborhoods and Cognitive Development (Psychology), Jondou Chen and
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E.
Brand
Youth Entrepreneurship (Psychology), William Damon et al.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Parenting with Digital Devices (Psychology), Pamela E. Davis-Kean and
Sandra Tang
Bullying, Aggression, and Human Development (Psychology), Samuel E.
Ehrenreich and Marion K. Underwood
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan (Psychology), Robyn Fivush and
Theodore E. A. Waters
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H.
Gauthier
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Labor Market Instability, Labor Market Entry, and Early Career Development (Sociology), Michael Gebel
Changing Family Patterns (Sociology), Kathleen Gerson and Stacy Torres
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The Future of Employment, Wages, and Technological Change (Economics),
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Family Formation in Times of Labor Market Insecurities (Sociology), Johannes
Huinink
Transformation of the Employment Relationship (Sociology), Arne L. Kalleberg and Peter V. Marsden
Maternal and Paternal Employment across the Life Course (Sociology),
Michaela Kreyenfeld
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The Future of Marriage (Sociology), Elizabeth Aura McClintock
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Bhashkar Mazumder
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and Claudia Buchmann
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The Role of School-Related Peers and Social Networks in Human Development (Political Science), Chandra Muller
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and Carl Bereiter
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Schöemann and Rolf Becker
Gender and the Transition to Adulthood: A Diverse Pathways View (Sociology), Ingrid Schoon

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

15

The Role of Cultural, Social, and Psychological Factors in Disease and Illness
(Sociology), Robert A. Scott
Modeling Life Course Structure: The Triple Helix (Sociology), Tom Schuller
Becoming Adult: Meanings of Markers to Adulthood (Sociology), Richard A.
Settersten, Jr. et al.
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced
Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
(Sociology), Herman G. van de Werfhorst
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Gender and Work (Sociology), Christine L. Williams and Megan Tobias Neely



Positive Developments during the
Transition to Adulthood
GIL G. NOAM and BAILEY TRIGGS

Abstract
The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we
traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the
seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both
earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than
10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7- to 30-year-olds, an over 20-year
age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This
essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern
conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a
developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in
this area.

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
When considering the foundations of how we define adolescence through
the life span, several key theorists inform how we approach the topic today.
Research has evolved from G. Stanley Hall’s view that adolescence was a
time of “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904), to Erik Erikson’s proposal of a human
development model for the entire life span (Erikson, 1950), to James E. Marcia’s expansion of Erikson’s proposal to emphasize the importance of a coherent sense of identity and an engaged meaning-making process (Marcia, 1966).
Though a popular criticism of youth today, the concept of a prolonged adolescence is not a new one. Daniel Levinson claimed it takes a young man
about 15 years to fully immerge into an adult (Levinson, 1978), but it took
another decade for developmental psychologists and other social scientists
to distinguish the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood further by
introducing the concept of emerging adulthood.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

“EMERGING ADULTHOOD”: BETWEEN ADOLESCENCE
AND ADULTHOOD
Researchers have pointed to shifting educational, financial, and parenting
priorities that have given rise to phase of late adolescence or “emerging
adulthood” that occurs between ages 18 and 25 (Arnett, 2000). James E.
Côté suggested that emerging adults are pursuing personal and individual
fulfillment, and that the transition to adulthood is now more vague and
insecure. He tackled this problem from a sociological perspective, suggesting that mass culture and profit-driven industries have promoted a culture
of individualism (Côté, 2000), and that young people develop strategic
identities in order to maximize their identity capital and make their goals
easier to accomplish (Côté, 2010).
DEMOGRAPHICS OF EMERGING ADULTHOOD
The stage of “emerging adulthood” accounts for young people who are
not considered adolescents but lack the traditional markers society places
around adulthood such as workforce participation, independence from
parents, committed romantic relationships and family building. For many,
those milestones are pushed into the late 20s or 30s and beyond. Census
data shows 98.1% of adolescents aged 12–17 are unmarried and 95.2%
live with at least one parent (US Bureau of Census, 2015a). Of course, the
demographics switch significantly in the age range of 30–34. By that age
64.2% have married, 78.7 have become parents, and only 6.4% attend school
(US Bureau of Census, 2015b). Emerging adulthood and the phases that
lead to the adult statistics are complex but show that before reaching age 30,
young adults are consistently less committed to the significant relationship,
parenting, and career.
SUBJECTIVITY OF ADULTHOOD
The Bureau of Census data only gives us a small picture of some of the criteria that answer the question, “Am I really an adult?” Research on emerging
adulthood shows that even with all these milestones completed, many people still resist the “adult” label. Being an adult is as much a state of mind
and self-identity as it is a clearly defined role in society. In his research on
emerging adulthood, Arnett outlines the top criteria people use when determining whether they are willing to label themselves as an adult: accepting
personal responsibility, making independent decisions and attaining financial independence (Arnett, 2000). Clearly, changing demographics are not the
only reason young adults do not feel like they have established themselves
psychologically.

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

3

What this exposes is that the life cycle in its phasic, age-graded way is very
confusing and quite individualized. The formativeness of different phases
has lost its clarity compared to when Erikson introduced his concepts in the
1950s as the options to be an adult have expanded, making it difficult to create
descriptions and norms out of different phases. From positive psychology,
the concept and acceptance of “emerging adulthood” has now normalized
this delay of adulthood responsibilities. Many factors at play support this
shift: impacts of labor market, difficulty of high school and college graduates to get jobs, parents’ willingness to support children longer, as well as a
reduced stigma around living with parents once the formal education period
has ended. With these shifts comes an increased difficulty to keep normative
life cycle models intact, even though there is a continuing interest by textbook authors and in some developmental research to keep a temporal and
developmental order alive.
THE NEED FOR NEW THINKING
But what do we do when many of the traditional categories, such as identity formation and adult responsibility, do not clearly match the phasic and
age-graded stages? The emerging adult does not yet have a firm identity, as
such an identity tests itself in commitments and is not only a cognitive and
affective set of internal priorities of the self, and the young adult stage of intimacy and committed love, so well described by Erikson, is very hard when all
other aspects of adulthood are postponed. These problems of conceptualization are not only because of the extension of adolescence into the 20s, creating
a hybrid construct, but it also reveals the problems of traditional stage theories. As cultural and societal norms have shifted, the stepwise progression
has not been easily held up. Feminists in the 1990s critiqued Erikson for
putting the adolescent identity stage before the young adult intimacy stage
(Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991). They argued that for many
women, identity gets formed through intimate relationships and friendships.
Erikson, of course, knew that as well, but his concept of identity was linked
to autonomy, search, and self-discovery, and his ideal notion was that people need a sense of fidelity formed through positive identity before being
able to truly give away part of the self in order to create ongoing and lasting intimacy. However, he was never quite able to convince those who had a
very strong argument that identity can be shaped and discovered through the
merging and differentiating of people (pairs or groups) trying to find themselves.
There is also the issue of social class and race as well as cultural contexts.
Many of the emerging adulthood descriptions are class based, as they were
in Erikson’s time when the prolonged identity search, the protected time of

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

moratorium, was partly tied to the privilege of a college education. Arnett’s
analysis of national data to see if his emerging adult theory applied across
social classes confirmed that. While there were many commonalities across
emerging adults of all social classes, there were differences in the surveys of
those in the lower classes who reported feeling more depressed and lacking
access to financial support for education (Arnett, 2015).
In addition to education support, moving back home during the transition period between attending school and obtaining self-sustaining employment is only an option for emerging adults with families that have space in
their home and enough financial resources to sustain another family member beyond adolescence. Certainly, unemployment is even harsher for young
people of color, but it is not clear whether it is a phenomenon of emerging
adulthood or one of adulthood without opportunities and the challenges of
poverty. There has been some effort to explore the experience of emerging
adulthood from a racial/ethnic minority perspective (Syed & Mitchell, 2013)
but research is still limited in this area.
Given these difficulties in mapping progressions of psychosocial development that hold true for many people of a population, the general trend in
psychology has been to dismiss stages of development. Following the Piaget
years of cognitive development that shaped a whole generation of developmentalists from the 1960s to the 1990s and produced many stage theories of
morality, social cognition, self and personality, the Vygotskian paradigm and
other cultural psychologies emerged, some with a strong process orientation
(zone of proximal development) without specific content and structure of
normative accomplishment to be reached at specific ages and others plain
hostile toward any developmental thinking that would generalize beyond
the specific conditions of a culture or a group.
We are now in a “poststage period” of theorizing without being able to
fully let go of what is clearly a relevant phenomenon with huge practical
importance: The continued recognition that cognitive, emotional, relational,
physical, brain, and other developments unfold, not all chaotically and individual by individual but with some systematicity. It is also hard to argue
that such systematicity has some age chronological connections, at least at a
correlational level (age/skills/capacities/propensities). Even if these maps
are still controversial, it is hard to imagine a pediatrician to function without
them (e.g., physical growth charts). Stages and phases are needed to simplify, to organize, and to create some yardsticks that can be used in education,
health, and all professions. Yet they do not function well across cultures and
in societies that allow for highly individualized choices and pathways. Take
the example of motherhood and generativity: Having a baby and taking care
of him or her when the mother is 13, 23, 33, 43, or even 53 (and in some
exceptional cases, 63), covers a span of more than 50 years of development.

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5

It is hard to imagine making a developmental stage out of generativity that
corresponds with other dimensions of development, such as cognitive development, employability, and relational maturity (McAdams, de St Aubin, &
Logan, 1993). This complexity, of course, is not settled by creating a new
developmental stage with blurry boundaries in both directions of adolescence and adulthood. In the following section, we describe a new approach.

A NEW LOOK AT DEVELOPMENT: DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
THEORY (DPT) ALSO KNOWN AS THE CLOVER MODEL
The developmental process theory (DPT) or Clover Model assumes four
domains, each reflecting a particular kind of development (Malti & Noam,
2008). These are the four leaves of the clover—action, assertion, belonging,
and reflection. It is not hard to make out of the 4 dimensions 8, 10, or
even 40 as the asset model of Peter Benson and his colleagues have done
(Benson, 2003). Our goal was not to divide and subdivide but to seek the
very minimum dimensions necessary to understand the needs and desires
of children and adolescents and to provide them with the right support
and learning opportunities that engage and satisfy these needs. What we
found through research as well as clinical and classroom observations is that
action, assertion, belonging, and reflection are those four dimensions. We
call these dimensions and their interactions the Clover Model because they
do not follow each other sequentially but are each present at all points of
development. The leaves are not distinct entities; rather, they overlap like a
Venn diagram.
Every individual exercises aspects of each of these four developmental processes and needs to balance them, but each leaf takes prominence for specific
age groups. People move along a continuum prioritizing the task of one leaf
before another, but that priority does not mean that the other dimensions are
not applicable. In early adolescence, for example, the belonging processes
become essential. However, the physical needs of the action leaf, the issues of
assertion (e.g., of will and trying to make an impact), and reflection about self
and the world are also active. These establish a new balance with belonging
as the preeminent developmental frame. This model preserves a developmental point of view while broadening the scope from a stagewise progression of sense-making (Piaget, 1972), or life tasks (Erikson, 1994), or a singular
focus on relationships (Bowlby). Body, will, attachment, and cognition are in
continuous exchange. They evolve together and apart, maintaining a tension
between progression and regression.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ACTION
The child in early childhood is highly action-oriented, though this tends to
be slightly more so for boys than girls. Young children are very concerned
with their own perspective and with actively and physically engaging in the
world. However, mastering impulses and emotions, and satisfying immediate needs exist lifelong. Many positive, athletic experiences, mindfulness,
and so on are meaningful and pleasurable at all phases of life, but typically
the coordination of body and impulses becomes more coordinated (updated)
throughout childhood and adolescence.
ASSERTION
Exploring their world is paramount for children, and to do this, they assert
themselves, their wants and needs, and interests (now more verbally than
via action). They can appear oblivious to the needs of others because they do
not yet have the capacity to fully coordinate multiple perspectives. Learning to do so will require asserting themselves and dealing with the reactions of others. Knowing a youth may be expecting hostility from others and
understanding aggressiveness in terms of striving for assertion may help a
mentor normalize a mentee’s aggressiveness (Malti & Noam, 2009), and be
more hopeful that the mentor can provide a corrective emotional experience.
Again, assertiveness, also called agency, is a lifelong set of processes, accomplishments, and risks.
BELONGING
With a secure attachment, a youth will explore the world with relative ease,
and if he or she has successfully achieved mastery during the industrious
explorations of talents, interests, and skills of middle childhood, both of
these experiences will dovetail with the emergence of the mutual-inclusive
perspective-taking skills that typically appear during middle school (sometimes earlier for girls). The result is a concern for belonging and a sense
of allegiance with like-minded and affirming peers. A sense of belonging
becomes all important, such that peers take on magnified importance,
sometimes trumping family connectedness as the youth’s primary source
of social affirmation. Of course, this can result in an overly conforming
approach to relationships for beyond adolescence. Again, attachment and
belonging issues exist from early childhood to death, but the form they take
are different at different ages (e.g., being a son vs being a father).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

7

REFLECTION
Teens who are able to take a perspective on their friendships, cultural groups,
or families can begin to reflect on ways in which they differ from others, in
values, potential, interests, and needs. A deeper degree of identity exploration can ensue with the full force of mutual-inclusive perspective taking
being applied to self-discovery. Reflection, which is hampered by anxious
attachment but helped by the security of solid attachment style, results in
exploration beyond the comfortable boundaries of the collective views of
peers, families, and other familiar people. Knowing this, a mentor can help
the youth who wants (and now is able) to engage in deeper reflection to consider opportunities the youth has never considered. While we used to view
this work as marking adolescence, we now know that creating meaning and
identity happens throughout life.
As should be clear from this brief overview, at each position on the Clover,
other leaves can take prominence for a brief or extended period or in specific relationships or contexts, and the process of one leaf may be needed to
bridge two others. For example, the transition from the belonging to reflection position may require an altogether new type of assertion to chart new
educational territories or career terrain. Normative changes that occur from
middle childhood to late adolescence mean that adolescents typically have
different needs for belonging, assertion, action, and reflection than children.
From a developmental perspective, it also means that significant relationships need to foster child and adolescent needs and thereby fill a unique
function in the youth’s life.
DPT AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
We now want to explore how DPT expresses itself in the emerging adult
years. We posit that the four Clover Model domains exist from the beginning
of life until the end: it is the balance between them that changes. At different phases of life, an updating can and should happen for every domain. This
rebalancing and updating is what we term developmental process. Much of this
work is conceptual with clinical information and developmental observations as the basis. It also represents a heuristic to review selectively important
literature on this developmental phase. Thus, we use our model to integrate
existing literature that has grown impressively.
ACTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
In emerging adults, an action orientation may manifest as struggles with
self-management and impulse control. Studies have found that emotion
regulation strategies are more limited for this age group than in older age

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

groups (Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014). There is also an expectation that
this age group will be more adventurous and risk-taking than other age
groups. In fact, research on the association between sensation seeking and
risk behaviors in emerging adults has found a connection between sensation seeking and various aspects of well-being among college-attending
emerging adults (Ravert et al., 2013). Those who sought out high-intensity
sensations were associated with low psychological well-being, where those
emerging adults who were seeking novelty had positive associations with
well-being and were not significantly associated with risky drinking, drug
abuse, or sexual behavior (Ravert et al., 2013, p. 24).
The rise and ubiquity of social media and the instant gratification that
having nearly every product, person, and idea at one’s fingertips provides
an easy vehicle for impulsive behavior focused on fast gratification. While
the digital world creates great opportunities for emerging adults to find
and share their voice, exposure to certain types of media can also have
negative outcomes on this age group, including body image, sexual, and
prosocial behavior (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, & Howard, 2013). At this age,
there is also a strong drinking and drug abuse culture that can undermine
young adults’ ability to manage their lives. An unmoored sense of adult
identity may contribute to increased substance abuse as well. Emerging
adults who self-reported as “feeling in-between” positively correlated with
substance-related problems (Smith, Bahar, Cleeland, & Davis, 2014).
Neuroscience research is supporting the view that the adolescent brain is
not fully matured in the 20s and that reasoning and language skills are still
developing. Furthermore, MRI studies have shown that impulsivity is higher
and emotion control lower than in full adulthood (Johnson, Blum, & Giedd,
2009; Rubia et al., 2000).
ASSERTIVENESS AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Developing a strong sense of self and having the confidence to communicate
that to others is an important component of emerging adulthood in Western
societies. As relationships with family and friends mature, emerging adults
have more opportunities at this time in life to express agency in their choices
and interpersonal interactions (Bynner, 2005). As with our previous discussion of action orientation, technological advances and the globalization of the
economy have given this rising generation of emerging adults more opportunities to choose than ever before. As Barry Schwartz examines in his book
The Paradox of Choice, the vastness of today’s choices can be as crippling as it
is liberating, particularly for those who apply internal pressure to make the
best choices, what Schwartz refers to as maximizers as opposed to satisficers
(Schwartz, 2004).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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BELONGING AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Research has shown that the formation of secure attachments in infancy can
have an impact on brain development in early adulthood. In a 2015 paper,
Christina Moutsiana, Tom Johnstone, and their team shared the findings of
their 22-year longitudinal study, where they found a connection between
insecure attachment style in infancy and greater amygdala volumes in early
adulthood (Moutsiana et al., 2015). The finding is notable because higher
amygdala volume in the brain has been connected to anxiety, depression,
and difficulty processing emotions (Baur, Hänggi, & Jäncke, 2012; Holmes
et al., 2012). The family relationship is not just critical because of its impact on
brain development, emerging adults often return to the family after receiving
education due to financial constraints and a more attachment orientation in
modern families. One study found that “establishing nonconflictual relationships with parents was associated with markers of young adulthood status
and attainment of developmental tasks,” and positive, guilt-free relationships, specifically with the father that maintain a “close enough” distance
are particularly effective in helping young adults find their independence
(Shulman & Ben-Artzi, 2003, p. 225).
In addition to adjusting to a more adult relationship with parents, this phase
is seen as a time to experiment with romantic relationships and gain experience before making a commitment. For many who experienced the divorces
in their parents’ generation, marriage is seen with skepticism and either unrealistic or something to be decided on after a long trial period. This age group
also has a culture of sexual risk-taking, with one study finding as many as
40% of respondents reporting a recent casual sex partner at age 22 (Lyons,
Manning, Longmore, & Giordano, 2015).
REFLECTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Reflecting and meaning-making are key components of the identity searching that takes place in emerging adulthood. The meaning-making system is
not just formed in adolescence. It is often tied to occupation, which is a struggle when that occupation is still undefined for so many in that age group and
job opportunities are limited.
For many, religion plays a role in the meaning-making process. In 2002,
Arnett surveyed 140 emerging adults to better understand what role religion
played in their process of meaning-making. He found that the influence of
family socialization in religion faded with the passage of time, with many
emerging adults priding themselves on their independence from their parent’s belief system, viewing it as a good and necessary part of their development (Arnett & Jensen, 2002). The rejection of their parents’ beliefs does
not mean emerging adults are entirely faithless. They may pick and choose

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the morals and ethics that appeal to them, viewing their beliefs as a personal,
individual choice rather than participation in a collective organization. However, more research with larger samples is needed.
Identity is not just an individual process but also a collective concept with
a cohort effect—what it means to be a “millennial,” for example. Each generation forms templates of meaning, identity, and choice. Being indecisive
about who you are is becoming the new norm for this age group. When
Arnett, Ramos, and Jensen surveyed emerging adults ages 20–29 to better
understand their ideological views, they found a distinct pull between the
ethics of autonomy and community, which they relate to a “struggle, not yet
fully articulated, over the ideological direction of their generation” (Arnett,
Ramos, & Jensen, 2001, p. 78).
In summary, DPT can help organize the growing field of study regarding
strengths and vulnerabilities in the emerging adult years. The extension
of making firm life commitments into the third decade of life allows for
more exploration and action orientation and the development of voice and
choice during the 20s. The belonging needs are met in part by closer relationships with parents, often economically dependent and living in the same
household, or establishing intimacy through groups and casual intimate
encounters rather than through one-on-one committed relationships that
lead to early establishments of families. Finally, the meaning-making related
to establishing an identity is taking longer, moving from an adolescent task
to one reaching well into young adulthood.
OUTLOOK
In this final section, we turn to the issue of positive development and mental
health. DPT is more than a rewrite of stage theory to encompass a dynamic
balance between the four adaptable elements that can become updated
throughout life. What we have found is that a productive balance across
domains is also a good description of positive mental health. A person who
lives positively in his or her body, expresses wishes and desires without too
much inhibition, is engaged in empathic and intimate relationships and has
meaning in life, and has more than Freud’s “love and work” or a positive
sum of functional checklists that attest to mental health. What does that
mean for the young adult?
Overcoming adolescent impulsivity and college drug and alcohol use
is a good start. However, of course, having begun to embrace a healthy
nutritional and exercise lifestyle that is prevention-oriented is also important. Beginning to express positions and perspectives as a participating and
informed citizen is part of a productive emerging adulthood. Exploring and
possibly committing to an intimate relationship, to rework the attachments

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

11

of the original family and to build lasting friendships mark real progress.
Moreover, finally, to establish a more coherent meaning system and identity
that give purpose to life is a very large task and a central accomplishment
of the young adult years. It is important to further these strands of development and to research them to better understand and support the young
people moving from one transitional period—adolescence—to the next one
leading up to adulthood.
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Arnett, J. J. (2015). Does emerging adulthood theory apply across social
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Arnett, J. J., & Jensen, L. A. (2002). A congregation of one: Individualized religious
beliefs among emerging adults. Journal of Adolescent Research, 17(5), 451–467.
Arnett, J. J., Ramos, K. D., & Jensen, L. A. (2001). Ideological views in emerging adulthood: Balancing autonomy and community. Journal of Adult Development, 8(2),
69–79.
Baur, V., Hänggi, J., & Jäncke, L. (2012). Volumetric associations between uncinate
fasciculus, amygdala, and trait anxiety. BMC Neuroscience, 13(1), 437–446.
Benson, P. L. (2003). Developmental assets and asset-building community: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In R. M. Lerner & P. L. Benson (Eds.), Developmental assets and asset-building communities: Implications for research, policy, and practice
(pp. 19–43). New York, NY: Springer.
Bynner, J. (2005). Rethinking the youth phase of the life-course: The case for emerging
adulthood? Journal of Youth Studies, 8(4), 367–384.
Côté, J. E. (2000). Arrested adulthood: The changing nature of maturity and identity. New
York, NY: New York University Press.
Côté, J. E. (2010). The role of identity capital in the transition to adulthood: The individualization thesis examined. Journal of Youth Studies, 5(2), 117–134.
Coyne, S. M., Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Howard, E. (2013). Emerging in a digital world
a decade review of media use, effects, and gratifications in emerging adulthood.
Emerging Adulthood, 1(2), 125–137.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society (1st ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1994). Identity: Youth and crisis (7th ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education (1st and 2nd ed.). New York, NY: D.
Appleton & Co.
Holmes, A. J., Lee, P. H., Hollinshead, M. O., Bakst, L., Roffman, J. L., Smoller, J.
W., & Buckner, R. L. (2012). Individual differences in amygdala-medial prefrontal
anatomy link negative affect, impaired social functioning, and polygenic depression risk. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(50), 18087–18100.

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Johnson, S. B., Blum, R. W., & Giedd, J. N. (2009). Adolescent maturity and the brain:
The promise and pitfalls of neuroscience research in adolescent health policy. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45(3), 216–221.
Jordan, J., Kaplan, A., Miller, J., Stiver, I., & Surrey, J. (1991). Women’s growth in connection: Writings from the Stone Center. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Levinson, D. J. (1978). The seasons of a man’s life. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Lyons, H. A., Manning, W. D., Longmore, M. A., & Giordano, P. C. (2015). Gender
and casual sexual activity from adolescence to emerging adulthood: Social and life
course correlates. Journal of Sex Research, 52(5), 543–557.
Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (2008). The hidden crisis in mental health and education:
The gap between student needs and existing supports. New Directions for Youth
Development, 2008(120), 13–29.
Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (2009). A developmental approach to the prevention of adolescent’s aggressive behavior and the promotion of resilience. International Journal
of Developmental Science, 3(3), 235–246.
Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558.
McAdams, D. P., de St Aubin, E. D., & Logan, R. L. (1993). Generativity among young,
midlife, and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 8(2), 221–230.
Moutsiana, C., Johnstone, T., Murray, L., Fearon, P., Cooper, P. J., Pliatsikas, C., …
Halligan, S. L. (2015). Insecure attachment during infancy predicts greater amygdala volumes in early adulthood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56(5),
540–548.
Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development, 15(1), 1–12.
Ravert, R. D., Kim, S. Y., Schwartz, S. J., Weisskirch, R. S., Zamboanga, B. L., Ham,
L. S., … Bersamin, M. M. (2013). The association between sensation seeking and
well-being among college-attending emerging adults. Journal of College Student
Development, 54(1), 17–28.
Rubia, K., Overmeyer, S., Taylor, E., Brammer, M., Williams, S. C. R., Simmons, A.,
… Bullmore, E. T. (2000). Functional frontalisation with age: Mapping neurodevelopmental trajectories with fMRI. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(1),
13–19.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice. New York, NY: Ecco.
Shulman, S., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Age-related differences in the transition from
adolescence to adulthood and links with family relationships. Journal of Adult
Development, 10(4), 217–226.
Smith, D. C., Bahar, O. S., Cleeland, L. R., & Davis, J. P. (2014). Self-perceived emerging adult status and substance use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(3), 935–941.
Syed, M., & Mitchell, L. L. (2013). Race, ethnicity, and emerging adulthood retrospect
and prospects. Emerging Adulthood, 1(2), 83–95.
US Census Bureau. (2015a). America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015: Children (C table series). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/
data/cps2015.html

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US Census Bureau. (2015b). America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015:
Adults (A table series). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/
data/cps2015A.html
Zimmermann, P., & Iwanski, A. (2014). Emotion regulation from early adolescence
to emerging adulthood and middle adulthood age differences, gender differences,
and emotion-specific developmental variations. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 38(2), 182–194.

GIL G. NOAM SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Prof. Gil G. Noam, EdD, PhD, (Habil.), is the founder and director of The
PEAR Institute: Partnerships in Education and Resilience at Harvard University and McLean Hospital. An associate professor at Harvard Medical
School focusing on prevention and resilience, Dr. Noam trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst in both Europe and
the United States. Dr. Noam has a strong interest in translating research and
innovation to support resilience in youth in educational settings.
BAILEY TRIGGS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Bailey Triggs, MS, is the project manager of product design and development at The PEAR Institute at Harvard University and McLean Hospital.
Prior to her work at Harvard, Bailey served as the communications director
of the Children’s Safety Network, a national injury and violence prevention
resource center funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration
of the US Department of Health and Human Services, centered at the Education Development Center. She holds a masters degree in public relations
from Boston University.
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Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
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Brand
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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Transformation of the Employment Relationship (Sociology), Arne L. Kalleberg and Peter V. Marsden
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Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

15

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(Sociology), Robert A. Scott
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Becoming Adult: Meanings of Markers to Adulthood (Sociology), Richard A.
Settersten, Jr. et al.
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Gender and Work (Sociology), Christine L. Williams and Megan Tobias Neely


Positive Developments during the
Transition to Adulthood
GIL G. NOAM and BAILEY TRIGGS

Abstract
The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we
traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the
seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both
earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than
10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7- to 30-year-olds, an over 20-year
age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This
essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern
conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a
developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in
this area.

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
When considering the foundations of how we define adolescence through
the life span, several key theorists inform how we approach the topic today.
Research has evolved from G. Stanley Hall’s view that adolescence was a
time of “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904), to Erik Erikson’s proposal of a human
development model for the entire life span (Erikson, 1950), to James E. Marcia’s expansion of Erikson’s proposal to emphasize the importance of a coherent sense of identity and an engaged meaning-making process (Marcia, 1966).
Though a popular criticism of youth today, the concept of a prolonged adolescence is not a new one. Daniel Levinson claimed it takes a young man
about 15 years to fully immerge into an adult (Levinson, 1978), but it took
another decade for developmental psychologists and other social scientists
to distinguish the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood further by
introducing the concept of emerging adulthood.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

“EMERGING ADULTHOOD”: BETWEEN ADOLESCENCE
AND ADULTHOOD
Researchers have pointed to shifting educational, financial, and parenting
priorities that have given rise to phase of late adolescence or “emerging
adulthood” that occurs between ages 18 and 25 (Arnett, 2000). James E.
Côté suggested that emerging adults are pursuing personal and individual
fulfillment, and that the transition to adulthood is now more vague and
insecure. He tackled this problem from a sociological perspective, suggesting that mass culture and profit-driven industries have promoted a culture
of individualism (Côté, 2000), and that young people develop strategic
identities in order to maximize their identity capital and make their goals
easier to accomplish (Côté, 2010).
DEMOGRAPHICS OF EMERGING ADULTHOOD
The stage of “emerging adulthood” accounts for young people who are
not considered adolescents but lack the traditional markers society places
around adulthood such as workforce participation, independence from
parents, committed romantic relationships and family building. For many,
those milestones are pushed into the late 20s or 30s and beyond. Census
data shows 98.1% of adolescents aged 12–17 are unmarried and 95.2%
live with at least one parent (US Bureau of Census, 2015a). Of course, the
demographics switch significantly in the age range of 30–34. By that age
64.2% have married, 78.7 have become parents, and only 6.4% attend school
(US Bureau of Census, 2015b). Emerging adulthood and the phases that
lead to the adult statistics are complex but show that before reaching age 30,
young adults are consistently less committed to the significant relationship,
parenting, and career.
SUBJECTIVITY OF ADULTHOOD
The Bureau of Census data only gives us a small picture of some of the criteria that answer the question, “Am I really an adult?” Research on emerging
adulthood shows that even with all these milestones completed, many people still resist the “adult” label. Being an adult is as much a state of mind
and self-identity as it is a clearly defined role in society. In his research on
emerging adulthood, Arnett outlines the top criteria people use when determining whether they are willing to label themselves as an adult: accepting
personal responsibility, making independent decisions and attaining financial independence (Arnett, 2000). Clearly, changing demographics are not the
only reason young adults do not feel like they have established themselves
psychologically.

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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What this exposes is that the life cycle in its phasic, age-graded way is very
confusing and quite individualized. The formativeness of different phases
has lost its clarity compared to when Erikson introduced his concepts in the
1950s as the options to be an adult have expanded, making it difficult to create
descriptions and norms out of different phases. From positive psychology,
the concept and acceptance of “emerging adulthood” has now normalized
this delay of adulthood responsibilities. Many factors at play support this
shift: impacts of labor market, difficulty of high school and college graduates to get jobs, parents’ willingness to support children longer, as well as a
reduced stigma around living with parents once the formal education period
has ended. With these shifts comes an increased difficulty to keep normative
life cycle models intact, even though there is a continuing interest by textbook authors and in some developmental research to keep a temporal and
developmental order alive.
THE NEED FOR NEW THINKING
But what do we do when many of the traditional categories, such as identity formation and adult responsibility, do not clearly match the phasic and
age-graded stages? The emerging adult does not yet have a firm identity, as
such an identity tests itself in commitments and is not only a cognitive and
affective set of internal priorities of the self, and the young adult stage of intimacy and committed love, so well described by Erikson, is very hard when all
other aspects of adulthood are postponed. These problems of conceptualization are not only because of the extension of adolescence into the 20s, creating
a hybrid construct, but it also reveals the problems of traditional stage theories. As cultural and societal norms have shifted, the stepwise progression
has not been easily held up. Feminists in the 1990s critiqued Erikson for
putting the adolescent identity stage before the young adult intimacy stage
(Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991). They argued that for many
women, identity gets formed through intimate relationships and friendships.
Erikson, of course, knew that as well, but his concept of identity was linked
to autonomy, search, and self-discovery, and his ideal notion was that people need a sense of fidelity formed through positive identity before being
able to truly give away part of the self in order to create ongoing and lasting intimacy. However, he was never quite able to convince those who had a
very strong argument that identity can be shaped and discovered through the
merging and differentiating of people (pairs or groups) trying to find themselves.
There is also the issue of social class and race as well as cultural contexts.
Many of the emerging adulthood descriptions are class based, as they were
in Erikson’s time when the prolonged identity search, the protected time of

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

moratorium, was partly tied to the privilege of a college education. Arnett’s
analysis of national data to see if his emerging adult theory applied across
social classes confirmed that. While there were many commonalities across
emerging adults of all social classes, there were differences in the surveys of
those in the lower classes who reported feeling more depressed and lacking
access to financial support for education (Arnett, 2015).
In addition to education support, moving back home during the transition period between attending school and obtaining self-sustaining employment is only an option for emerging adults with families that have space in
their home and enough financial resources to sustain another family member beyond adolescence. Certainly, unemployment is even harsher for young
people of color, but it is not clear whether it is a phenomenon of emerging
adulthood or one of adulthood without opportunities and the challenges of
poverty. There has been some effort to explore the experience of emerging
adulthood from a racial/ethnic minority perspective (Syed & Mitchell, 2013)
but research is still limited in this area.
Given these difficulties in mapping progressions of psychosocial development that hold true for many people of a population, the general trend in
psychology has been to dismiss stages of development. Following the Piaget
years of cognitive development that shaped a whole generation of developmentalists from the 1960s to the 1990s and produced many stage theories of
morality, social cognition, self and personality, the Vygotskian paradigm and
other cultural psychologies emerged, some with a strong process orientation
(zone of proximal development) without specific content and structure of
normative accomplishment to be reached at specific ages and others plain
hostile toward any developmental thinking that would generalize beyond
the specific conditions of a culture or a group.
We are now in a “poststage period” of theorizing without being able to
fully let go of what is clearly a relevant phenomenon with huge practical
importance: The continued recognition that cognitive, emotional, relational,
physical, brain, and other developments unfold, not all chaotically and individual by individual but with some systematicity. It is also hard to argue
that such systematicity has some age chronological connections, at least at a
correlational level (age/skills/capacities/propensities). Even if these maps
are still controversial, it is hard to imagine a pediatrician to function without
them (e.g., physical growth charts). Stages and phases are needed to simplify, to organize, and to create some yardsticks that can be used in education,
health, and all professions. Yet they do not function well across cultures and
in societies that allow for highly individualized choices and pathways. Take
the example of motherhood and generativity: Having a baby and taking care
of him or her when the mother is 13, 23, 33, 43, or even 53 (and in some
exceptional cases, 63), covers a span of more than 50 years of development.

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

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It is hard to imagine making a developmental stage out of generativity that
corresponds with other dimensions of development, such as cognitive development, employability, and relational maturity (McAdams, de St Aubin, &
Logan, 1993). This complexity, of course, is not settled by creating a new
developmental stage with blurry boundaries in both directions of adolescence and adulthood. In the following section, we describe a new approach.

A NEW LOOK AT DEVELOPMENT: DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
THEORY (DPT) ALSO KNOWN AS THE CLOVER MODEL
The developmental process theory (DPT) or Clover Model assumes four
domains, each reflecting a particular kind of development (Malti & Noam,
2008). These are the four leaves of the clover—action, assertion, belonging,
and reflection. It is not hard to make out of the 4 dimensions 8, 10, or
even 40 as the asset model of Peter Benson and his colleagues have done
(Benson, 2003). Our goal was not to divide and subdivide but to seek the
very minimum dimensions necessary to understand the needs and desires
of children and adolescents and to provide them with the right support
and learning opportunities that engage and satisfy these needs. What we
found through research as well as clinical and classroom observations is that
action, assertion, belonging, and reflection are those four dimensions. We
call these dimensions and their interactions the Clover Model because they
do not follow each other sequentially but are each present at all points of
development. The leaves are not distinct entities; rather, they overlap like a
Venn diagram.
Every individual exercises aspects of each of these four developmental processes and needs to balance them, but each leaf takes prominence for specific
age groups. People move along a continuum prioritizing the task of one leaf
before another, but that priority does not mean that the other dimensions are
not applicable. In early adolescence, for example, the belonging processes
become essential. However, the physical needs of the action leaf, the issues of
assertion (e.g., of will and trying to make an impact), and reflection about self
and the world are also active. These establish a new balance with belonging
as the preeminent developmental frame. This model preserves a developmental point of view while broadening the scope from a stagewise progression of sense-making (Piaget, 1972), or life tasks (Erikson, 1994), or a singular
focus on relationships (Bowlby). Body, will, attachment, and cognition are in
continuous exchange. They evolve together and apart, maintaining a tension
between progression and regression.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ACTION
The child in early childhood is highly action-oriented, though this tends to
be slightly more so for boys than girls. Young children are very concerned
with their own perspective and with actively and physically engaging in the
world. However, mastering impulses and emotions, and satisfying immediate needs exist lifelong. Many positive, athletic experiences, mindfulness,
and so on are meaningful and pleasurable at all phases of life, but typically
the coordination of body and impulses becomes more coordinated (updated)
throughout childhood and adolescence.
ASSERTION
Exploring their world is paramount for children, and to do this, they assert
themselves, their wants and needs, and interests (now more verbally than
via action). They can appear oblivious to the needs of others because they do
not yet have the capacity to fully coordinate multiple perspectives. Learning to do so will require asserting themselves and dealing with the reactions of others. Knowing a youth may be expecting hostility from others and
understanding aggressiveness in terms of striving for assertion may help a
mentor normalize a mentee’s aggressiveness (Malti & Noam, 2009), and be
more hopeful that the mentor can provide a corrective emotional experience.
Again, assertiveness, also called agency, is a lifelong set of processes, accomplishments, and risks.
BELONGING
With a secure attachment, a youth will explore the world with relative ease,
and if he or she has successfully achieved mastery during the industrious
explorations of talents, interests, and skills of middle childhood, both of
these experiences will dovetail with the emergence of the mutual-inclusive
perspective-taking skills that typically appear during middle school (sometimes earlier for girls). The result is a concern for belonging and a sense
of allegiance with like-minded and affirming peers. A sense of belonging
becomes all important, such that peers take on magnified importance,
sometimes trumping family connectedness as the youth’s primary source
of social affirmation. Of course, this can result in an overly conforming
approach to relationships for beyond adolescence. Again, attachment and
belonging issues exist from early childhood to death, but the form they take
are different at different ages (e.g., being a son vs being a father).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

7

REFLECTION
Teens who are able to take a perspective on their friendships, cultural groups,
or families can begin to reflect on ways in which they differ from others, in
values, potential, interests, and needs. A deeper degree of identity exploration can ensue with the full force of mutual-inclusive perspective taking
being applied to self-discovery. Reflection, which is hampered by anxious
attachment but helped by the security of solid attachment style, results in
exploration beyond the comfortable boundaries of the collective views of
peers, families, and other familiar people. Knowing this, a mentor can help
the youth who wants (and now is able) to engage in deeper reflection to consider opportunities the youth has never considered. While we used to view
this work as marking adolescence, we now know that creating meaning and
identity happens throughout life.
As should be clear from this brief overview, at each position on the Clover,
other leaves can take prominence for a brief or extended period or in specific relationships or contexts, and the process of one leaf may be needed to
bridge two others. For example, the transition from the belonging to reflection position may require an altogether new type of assertion to chart new
educational territories or career terrain. Normative changes that occur from
middle childhood to late adolescence mean that adolescents typically have
different needs for belonging, assertion, action, and reflection than children.
From a developmental perspective, it also means that significant relationships need to foster child and adolescent needs and thereby fill a unique
function in the youth’s life.
DPT AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
We now want to explore how DPT expresses itself in the emerging adult
years. We posit that the four Clover Model domains exist from the beginning
of life until the end: it is the balance between them that changes. At different phases of life, an updating can and should happen for every domain. This
rebalancing and updating is what we term developmental process. Much of this
work is conceptual with clinical information and developmental observations as the basis. It also represents a heuristic to review selectively important
literature on this developmental phase. Thus, we use our model to integrate
existing literature that has grown impressively.
ACTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
In emerging adults, an action orientation may manifest as struggles with
self-management and impulse control. Studies have found that emotion
regulation strategies are more limited for this age group than in older age

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

groups (Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014). There is also an expectation that
this age group will be more adventurous and risk-taking than other age
groups. In fact, research on the association between sensation seeking and
risk behaviors in emerging adults has found a connection between sensation seeking and various aspects of well-being among college-attending
emerging adults (Ravert et al., 2013). Those who sought out high-intensity
sensations were associated with low psychological well-being, where those
emerging adults who were seeking novelty had positive associations with
well-being and were not significantly associated with risky drinking, drug
abuse, or sexual behavior (Ravert et al., 2013, p. 24).
The rise and ubiquity of social media and the instant gratification that
having nearly every product, person, and idea at one’s fingertips provides
an easy vehicle for impulsive behavior focused on fast gratification. While
the digital world creates great opportunities for emerging adults to find
and share their voice, exposure to certain types of media can also have
negative outcomes on this age group, including body image, sexual, and
prosocial behavior (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, & Howard, 2013). At this age,
there is also a strong drinking and drug abuse culture that can undermine
young adults’ ability to manage their lives. An unmoored sense of adult
identity may contribute to increased substance abuse as well. Emerging
adults who self-reported as “feeling in-between” positively correlated with
substance-related problems (Smith, Bahar, Cleeland, & Davis, 2014).
Neuroscience research is supporting the view that the adolescent brain is
not fully matured in the 20s and that reasoning and language skills are still
developing. Furthermore, MRI studies have shown that impulsivity is higher
and emotion control lower than in full adulthood (Johnson, Blum, & Giedd,
2009; Rubia et al., 2000).
ASSERTIVENESS AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Developing a strong sense of self and having the confidence to communicate
that to others is an important component of emerging adulthood in Western
societies. As relationships with family and friends mature, emerging adults
have more opportunities at this time in life to express agency in their choices
and interpersonal interactions (Bynner, 2005). As with our previous discussion of action orientation, technological advances and the globalization of the
economy have given this rising generation of emerging adults more opportunities to choose than ever before. As Barry Schwartz examines in his book
The Paradox of Choice, the vastness of today’s choices can be as crippling as it
is liberating, particularly for those who apply internal pressure to make the
best choices, what Schwartz refers to as maximizers as opposed to satisficers
(Schwartz, 2004).

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

9

BELONGING AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Research has shown that the formation of secure attachments in infancy can
have an impact on brain development in early adulthood. In a 2015 paper,
Christina Moutsiana, Tom Johnstone, and their team shared the findings of
their 22-year longitudinal study, where they found a connection between
insecure attachment style in infancy and greater amygdala volumes in early
adulthood (Moutsiana et al., 2015). The finding is notable because higher
amygdala volume in the brain has been connected to anxiety, depression,
and difficulty processing emotions (Baur, Hänggi, & Jäncke, 2012; Holmes
et al., 2012). The family relationship is not just critical because of its impact on
brain development, emerging adults often return to the family after receiving
education due to financial constraints and a more attachment orientation in
modern families. One study found that “establishing nonconflictual relationships with parents was associated with markers of young adulthood status
and attainment of developmental tasks,” and positive, guilt-free relationships, specifically with the father that maintain a “close enough” distance
are particularly effective in helping young adults find their independence
(Shulman & Ben-Artzi, 2003, p. 225).
In addition to adjusting to a more adult relationship with parents, this phase
is seen as a time to experiment with romantic relationships and gain experience before making a commitment. For many who experienced the divorces
in their parents’ generation, marriage is seen with skepticism and either unrealistic or something to be decided on after a long trial period. This age group
also has a culture of sexual risk-taking, with one study finding as many as
40% of respondents reporting a recent casual sex partner at age 22 (Lyons,
Manning, Longmore, & Giordano, 2015).
REFLECTION AND EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Reflecting and meaning-making are key components of the identity searching that takes place in emerging adulthood. The meaning-making system is
not just formed in adolescence. It is often tied to occupation, which is a struggle when that occupation is still undefined for so many in that age group and
job opportunities are limited.
For many, religion plays a role in the meaning-making process. In 2002,
Arnett surveyed 140 emerging adults to better understand what role religion
played in their process of meaning-making. He found that the influence of
family socialization in religion faded with the passage of time, with many
emerging adults priding themselves on their independence from their parent’s belief system, viewing it as a good and necessary part of their development (Arnett & Jensen, 2002). The rejection of their parents’ beliefs does
not mean emerging adults are entirely faithless. They may pick and choose

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the morals and ethics that appeal to them, viewing their beliefs as a personal,
individual choice rather than participation in a collective organization. However, more research with larger samples is needed.
Identity is not just an individual process but also a collective concept with
a cohort effect—what it means to be a “millennial,” for example. Each generation forms templates of meaning, identity, and choice. Being indecisive
about who you are is becoming the new norm for this age group. When
Arnett, Ramos, and Jensen surveyed emerging adults ages 20–29 to better
understand their ideological views, they found a distinct pull between the
ethics of autonomy and community, which they relate to a “struggle, not yet
fully articulated, over the ideological direction of their generation” (Arnett,
Ramos, & Jensen, 2001, p. 78).
In summary, DPT can help organize the growing field of study regarding
strengths and vulnerabilities in the emerging adult years. The extension
of making firm life commitments into the third decade of life allows for
more exploration and action orientation and the development of voice and
choice during the 20s. The belonging needs are met in part by closer relationships with parents, often economically dependent and living in the same
household, or establishing intimacy through groups and casual intimate
encounters rather than through one-on-one committed relationships that
lead to early establishments of families. Finally, the meaning-making related
to establishing an identity is taking longer, moving from an adolescent task
to one reaching well into young adulthood.
OUTLOOK
In this final section, we turn to the issue of positive development and mental
health. DPT is more than a rewrite of stage theory to encompass a dynamic
balance between the four adaptable elements that can become updated
throughout life. What we have found is that a productive balance across
domains is also a good description of positive mental health. A person who
lives positively in his or her body, expresses wishes and desires without too
much inhibition, is engaged in empathic and intimate relationships and has
meaning in life, and has more than Freud’s “love and work” or a positive
sum of functional checklists that attest to mental health. What does that
mean for the young adult?
Overcoming adolescent impulsivity and college drug and alcohol use
is a good start. However, of course, having begun to embrace a healthy
nutritional and exercise lifestyle that is prevention-oriented is also important. Beginning to express positions and perspectives as a participating and
informed citizen is part of a productive emerging adulthood. Exploring and
possibly committing to an intimate relationship, to rework the attachments

Positive Developments during the Transition to Adulthood

11

of the original family and to build lasting friendships mark real progress.
Moreover, finally, to establish a more coherent meaning system and identity
that give purpose to life is a very large task and a central accomplishment
of the young adult years. It is important to further these strands of development and to research them to better understand and support the young
people moving from one transitional period—adolescence—to the next one
leading up to adulthood.
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US Census Bureau. (2015b). America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015:
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Development, 38(2), 182–194.

GIL G. NOAM SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Prof. Gil G. Noam, EdD, PhD, (Habil.), is the founder and director of The
PEAR Institute: Partnerships in Education and Resilience at Harvard University and McLean Hospital. An associate professor at Harvard Medical
School focusing on prevention and resilience, Dr. Noam trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst in both Europe and
the United States. Dr. Noam has a strong interest in translating research and
innovation to support resilience in youth in educational settings.
BAILEY TRIGGS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Bailey Triggs, MS, is the project manager of product design and development at The PEAR Institute at Harvard University and McLean Hospital.
Prior to her work at Harvard, Bailey served as the communications director
of the Children’s Safety Network, a national injury and violence prevention
resource center funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration
of the US Department of Health and Human Services, centered at the Education Development Center. She holds a masters degree in public relations
from Boston University.
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