Understanding Adolescent Psychology: Key Stages & Characteristics

Evolutionary Psychology and Adolescent Development

Evolutionary psychology deals with the psychological changes that occur during life and analyzes how the human being passes through several stages to adulthood.

Objectives of Adolescence

1. Develop cognitive and emotional characteristics (abstract thought and self-awareness).
2. Build a personal identity.
3. Acquire social skills.

Youth Culture Characteristics

1. New forms of communication.
2. Individualization.
3. Body image assessment.
4. Cult of image.
5. Sensitivity.
6. Consumerism.
7. Nomadism.

Features of Formal Thought

1. Openness to the world.
2. Logical thinking.
3. Possibility of hypothetico-deductive thinking.
4. Egocentric thinking.

Beliefs and Irrational Thoughts

Beliefs are useful illusions that allow us to manage our experiences. Irrational beliefs lead to self-defeating thoughts and feelings, exerting an adverse effect on behavior. These ideas and irrational beliefs have the following characteristics:

1. Produce intense negative and lasting emotions.
2. Exaggerate the negative consequences of an event.
3. Reflect unrealistic demands and obligations on oneself and others.
4. Are absolutist and are accompanied by words like everything, nothing, or never.

Love and Relationships

The process of enchantment involves desiring another person uniquely. When there is correspondence in the relationship, love is filled with enthusiasm; however, a rupture leads to suffering. Routine and boredom are enemies of love. Infatuation is coupled with a desire for emotional intimacy, sexual connection, and commitment.

Blockages in Communication

• Imposing opinions.
• Criticism.
• Misinterpretation.

Improving Relationships

• Intimacy development.
• Satisfying needs.
• Self-awareness.
• Creating a space for negotiation.
• Forming a harmonious relationship.

Social Skills

Social skills are behaviors that we perform in an interpersonal context when expressing thoughts, feelings, rights, and desires in a way appropriate to the situation and respecting others.

Characteristics of Social Skills

1. Social skills require learning and contain physiological, cognitive, and affective components.
2. Social skills are a feature of behavior, not the person, and are specific responses to specific situations.