Early Adulthood: Body, Mind, and Path

This is Unit Eleven, part two, on sexual health and consent, the adult mind, and the paths from school to work. Part one closed on coming out and sexual fluidity. Part two opens with sexual health, then turns to how thinking changes after adolescence, and to the paths from school to work. Carry one question through this part: what shapes how adults think? A maturing brain, experience and mental shortcuts all play a part. At the entry on culture and cognition, the part adds culture, and shows that it shapes thinking without determining it. By the end you will be able to say which sexually transmitted infections are curable. To state when consent cannot be given. To describe post-formal and dialectical thought. To name the heuristic behind a judgement. And to tell dispositional from situational attributions.

Seven entries on sexual health: infections, pregnancy and parenthood, maternal deaths, and prevention.

Three kinds of infection.

HGD 1530 STIs: Bacterial, Parasitic, Viral

People aged fifteen to twenty-four account for almost half of new US sexually transmitted infections. Bacterial infections, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea, and the parasitic infection trichomoniasis are curable with medication, though reinfection is possible. Viral infections include HPV, which can cause genital warts and several cancers; herpes simplex virus, which recurs; and HIV. Untreated bacterial infections can cause infertility and pregnancy complications. Many infections cause no symptoms, so testing, not symptoms, reveals them. Exam items ask which are curable: bacterial and parasitic ones are; viral ones are managed.

HPV usually clears.

HGD 1531 HPV Usually Clears

In most cases, about nine in ten, HPV goes away on its own within two years without health problems, according to the CDC, and the types that cause warts differ from those that cause cervical and other cancers. The misconception is that HPV is always lifelong; herpes and HIV persist, but most HPV infections clear.

HIV, and treatment.

HGD 1532 HIV and Treatment

HIV causes a flu-like illness, then years without symptoms; untreated, it destroys immunity, and its late stage, AIDS, brings opportunistic infections. Antiretroviral therapy can lower viral load until tests cannot detect it: undetectable equals untransmittable. The misconception is that people with HIV on effective treatment can still transmit it sexually.

Disparities, and stigma.

HGD 1533 STI Disparities and Stigma

Non-Hispanic Black Americans are about thirteen percent of the population and about thirty-one percent of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis cases, a gap the CDC attributes to access to care, and stigma deters young people from getting tested. Disparities in infection track disparities in health-care access.

Pregnancy and parenthood.

HGD 1534 Pregnancy and Parenthood

About three point six million US births occur a year, nearly half to eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds, while parenthood is increasingly delayed or declined. Mothers carry more caregiving and are more likely to cut back paid work. Planned parenthood often brings fulfilment and meaning, though it can delay other identity tasks.

Maternal mortality.

HGD 1535 Maternal Mortality

About two hundred sixty thousand women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in twenty twenty-three, according to the WHO, about ninety-two percent of them in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Most maternal deaths are preventable, since the care that prevents or manages complications is well known.

Preventing infection and pregnancy.

HGD 1536 Prevention of STIs and Pregnancy

Condoms are the only method besides abstinence that prevents both pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, while hormonal methods and the IUD prevent pregnancy only; PrEP is medication that prevents HIV. Abstinence is defined differently by different people, a caution for survey research. The course describes methods and gives no personal advice.

Two entries on consent, harassment and assault, and on prevention and the law.

Consent, harassment, and assault.

HGD 1537 Consent, Harassment and Assault

Sexual violence is any unwanted sexual activity forced without consent, by verbal, physical or emotional means. Sexual harassment is unwanted sexual attention that interferes with school, work or activities, often but not always involving a power difference. Sexual assault is nonconsensual sexual contact. In a twenty nineteen survey, about a third of US adults reported harassment and about a quarter assault between eighteen and twenty-nine. The misconception is that not saying no is consent. Consent must be given, and it is not possible when a person is unconscious, too frightened, or incapacitated. Women reported both more often, but men and transgender people are also victimized.

Prevention, and the law.

HGD 1538 Prevention and Law

Prevention increasingly targets potential perpetrators rather than victims; endorsing rape myths predicts perpetration, and programmes for men show mixed but encouraging results. Marital rape was a crime in every US state by nineteen ninety-three, the Violence Against Women Act passed in nineteen ninety-four, and Title IX, from nineteen seventy-two, bars sex discrimination in federally funded education.

Five entries on the adult brain and mind, and on thinking that goes beyond formal operations.

The brain in early adulthood.

HGD 1539 The Brain in Early Adulthood

In early adulthood myelination continues, synaptic pruning winds down in the mid-twenties, and the brain shifts toward long-range connectivity, bringing better impulse and emotion control, delay of gratification, risk assessment and planning. Improvement is gradual, a transition rather than a switch flipped at a given birthday.

Emotional arousal, and inhibition.

HGD 1540 Emotional Arousal and Inhibition

Under emotional arousal, eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds resembled adolescents more than twenty-two- to twenty-five-year-olds on inhibition, in a study by Cohen and colleagues. The finding applies to emotionally charged situations, the hot decisions of unit nine, not to calm reasoning.

Thinking beyond formal operations.

HGD 1541 Post-Formal Thought

Post-formal thought, proposed beyond formal operations, is flexible, practical and open to more than one correct answer, combining logic with intuition and experience, like a young manager accepting that two conflicting plans each have merit and choosing by context. The misconception is that formal operations are the peak of adult thinking.

Dialectical and reflective thought.

HGD 1542 Dialectical and Reflective Thought

Dialectical thinking integrates opposing views and sees grey areas; reflective thought continuously evaluates beliefs against evidence and experience, as when a graduate who once saw every issue as right or wrong calls a setback a blessing in disguise. Reflective thought is said to emerge between twenty and twenty-five and to be stimulated by higher education.

Abilities across early adulthood.

HGD 1543 Abilities Across Early Adulthood

Fluid intelligence peaks in the twenties, while crystallized intelligence, accumulated knowledge, keeps rising through adulthood, and working memory improves through the twenties: a twenty-five-year-old is quicker on novel puzzles than her parents, who know more words. The misconception is that all intelligence declines after the twenties.

Seven entries on mental shortcuts and social thinking. The opening question is answered here.

Mental shortcuts.

HGD 1544 Heuristics

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that save effort but can mislead. The familiarity heuristic favours what is already known. The affect heuristic decides by feeling. The scarcity heuristic treats rarer things as more valuable, a tactic advertisers use. The availability heuristic judges events likelier when examples come easily to mind, like a student who judges plane crashes common after a week of news coverage. Exam items describe a judgement and ask for the heuristic: limited time only points to scarcity, a gut feeling to affect, a vivid recent example to availability, the known brand to familiarity. Heuristics are efficient; they fail in predictable situations.

Convergent and divergent thinking.

HGD 1545 Convergent and Divergent Thinking

Convergent thinking applies a known solution to reach one correct answer, such as solving a set equation; divergent thinking generates many new solutions, such as brainstorming uses for a paperclip, and underlies creativity. The two work together in real problem solving: generating many options, then converging on the best.

Reading beliefs, and reading feelings.

HGD 1546 Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind

Cognitive theory of mind reads others' intentions and beliefs; affective theory of mind reads their feelings. Cognitive empathy adopts a viewpoint; affective empathy shares an emotion. All four improve in early adulthood, and autistic adults show more difficulty on theory-of-mind tasks, partly depending on general ability.

Moral reasoning in early adulthood.

HGD 1547 Moral Reasoning in Early Adulthood

Emerging adults use postconventional reasoning more than teens, though Kohlberg held that few people ever reach his highest stage, and adult dilemmas, ambiguous and multi-factor, are decided faster and more flexibly than adolescents decide them. Unit eight's criticisms carry over: neglect of care, and a cultural bias toward individualism.

The payoff: culture and cognition.

HGD 1548 Culture and Cognition

Culture shapes how adults think, and that answers this part's question. Collectivistic cultures tend to favour holistic thinking, attending to relationships and context; individualistic cultures tend toward analytic thinking, focusing on objects and their attributes. The contrast shows most in attribution. In one study, European American adults explained a person's failure to help mostly by personality, a dispositional attribution, while Hindu Indian adults explained it mostly by the situation. A coworker misses a deadline: one colleague concludes she's disorganized, another that her child must have been sick. Japanese and US students used exchange norms in deciding whether to help a friend, Indian students communal norms. The misconception is that these are fixed traits of whole nations. They are average tendencies, with wide overlap and much variation within cultures, and globalization is blurring some differences. Culture shapes cognition without determining it.

Culture, and heuristics.

HGD 1549 Culture and Heuristics

Heuristic use differs across cultures: Israeli children showed the scarcity heuristic by seven, while Taiwanese children in the same study never did, and Italians and Swedes each judged likelier whichever hazard their own country had most recently suffered. Shortcuts are universal, but which ones people lean on reflects culture and experience.

Helping others in early adulthood.

HGD 1550 Prosocial Behaviour in Early Adulthood

Prosocial behaviour grows in early adulthood with perspective-taking and with new opportunities, such as voting, volunteering and helping others, like a twenty-year-old voting for the first time and volunteering at a food bank. Opportunity matters as much as capacity: new legal statuses and roles open new ways to help.

Seven entries to close the unit, on the paths from high school to work, and what education pays and costs.

Four paths after high school.

HGD 1551 Pathways After High School

Counsellors describe four paths after high school, the four E's: enlist, enroll, employ or explore, as in a gap year. One graduate joins the military, one enrolls in college, one takes a job and one travels for a year. Choices rest on identity and on circumstances such as income, local jobs and childcare costs.

The rise of college.

HGD 1552 The Rise of College

Rising credential demands helped create emerging adulthood: US high-school completion rose from twenty-four percent in nineteen forty to ninety-one percent of adults by twenty twenty-one, and about eighteen and a half million students enrolled in US colleges in fall twenty twenty-one. About thirty percent change majors, which is developmentally normal.

Majors, and attainment.

HGD 1553 Majors and Attainment

Business is the most common US bachelor's major, at about nineteen percent of degrees, followed by health professions at about thirteen. In twenty twenty-one, sixty-one percent of Asian, forty-two of White, twenty-eight of Black and twenty-one of Hispanic adults held a bachelor's; Black and Hispanic attainment rose over the preceding decade.

Alternatives to college.

HGD 1554 Alternatives to College

Alternatives to a four-year degree include community colleges, vocational schools training electricians or dental assistants, and apprenticeships, paid training combining work, mentoring and classes, as in Germany's dual system spanning every sector. Experiential learning, learning by doing plus reflection, also comes through internships, service learning and volunteering.

What education pays.

HGD 1555 Education, Earnings and Unemployment

Education pays, in both earnings and employment. In twenty twenty-two, median annual earnings were about seventy-four thousand dollars with a bachelor's degree, fifty-two thousand with an associate's, forty-four thousand with a high-school diploma only, and thirty-five thousand without one. Unemployment ran in the opposite order: about two percent with a bachelor's, nearly three with an associate's, three and a half with some college, four with high school, and five and a half without a diploma. The misconception is that an associate's degree is the same as unfinished credits; employers treat them differently. The earnings gap widens in middle adulthood.

What college costs.

HGD 1556 Costs of College

Average US tuition and fees ran about four thousand dollars at two-year public colleges, ninety-seven hundred at in-state public universities and thirty-eight thousand eight hundred at private ones, while Denmark, Norway and Sweden offer free tuition to residents. Books, housing and loans add to the cost, and many students work while studying.

Work in early adulthood.

HGD 1557 Work in Early Adulthood

Lifetime employment with one firm has faded, and younger workers value meaningful work, work–life balance, flexibility and employer concern for well-being. Most US workers are satisfied with their jobs but less so with pay. Generational generalizations are methodologically contested and are reported here as survey findings, not fixed traits.

Look at what you can now do. You can say which infections are curable, bacterial and parasitic ones, and which are managed, the viral ones, with most HPV clearing on its own. You can state that consent must be given, and cannot be when a person is unconscious, too frightened, or incapacitated. You can describe post-formal thought, open to more than one right answer, and dialectical thought, which integrates opposing views. You can name heuristics from their clues: scarcity, affect, availability and familiarity. And you can tell a dispositional attribution, she's disorganized, from a situational one, her child was sick, and say that cultural differences in thinking are average tendencies, not rules. Unit Twelve turns to relationships, family and work.