Emerging adulthood is proposed as a new conception of development for the period from the late teens through the twenties, with a focus on ages 18-25. A theoretical back-ground is presented, Then evidence is provided to support the idea that emerging adulthood is a distinct period de-mographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity explo-rations. How emerging adulthood iffers from adolescence and young adulthood is explained. Finally, a cultural con-text for the idea of emerging adulthood is outlined, and it is specified that emerging adulthood exists only in cultures that allow young people a prolonged period of independent role. exploration during the late teens and twenties. When our mothers were our age, they were engaged.... They at least had some idea what they were going to do with their lives.... I, on the other hand, will have a dual degree in majors

A dual taxonomy is presented to reconcile 2 incongruous facts about antisocial behavior: (a) It shows impressive continuity over age, but (b) its prevalence changes dramatically over age, increasing almost 10-fold temporarily during adolescence. This article suggests that delinquency conceals 2 distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of 1 sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating in a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive. There are marked individual differences in the stability of antisocial behavior. Many people behave antisocially, but their antisocial behavior is temporary and situational. In contrast, the antisocial behavior of some people is very stable and persistent. Temporary, situational ' antisocial behavior is quite common in the population, especially among adolescents. Persistent, stable antisocial behavior is found among a relatively small number of males whose behavior problems are also quite extreme. The central tenet of this article is that temporary versus persistent antisocial persons constitute two qualitatively distinct types of persons. In particular, I suggest that juvenile delinquency conceals two qualitatively distinct categories of individuals, each in need of its own distinct theoretical explanation. Of course, systems for classifying types of antisocial persons have been introduced before (e. g.,

This paper presents a new approach for measuring semantic similarity/distance between words and concepts. It combines a lexical taxonomy structure with corpus statistical information so that the semantic distance between nodes in the semantic space constructed by the taxonomy can be better quantified with the computational evidence derived from a distributional analysis of corpus data. Specifically, the proposed measure is a combined approach that inherits the edge-based approach of the edge counting scheme, which is then enhanced by the node-based approach of the information content calculation. When tested on a common data set of word pair similarity ratings, the proposed approach outperforms other computational models. It gives the highest correlation value (r = 0.828) with a benchmark based on human similarity judgements, whereas an upper bound (r = 0.885) is observed when human subjects replicate the same task. 1.

This paper uses a unique data set to measure peer effects among college roommates. Freshman year roommates and dormmates are randomly assigned at Dartmouth College. I find that peers have an impact on grade point average and on decisions to join social groups such as fraternities. Residential peer effects are markedly absent in other major life decisions such as choice of college major. Peer effects in GPA occur at the individual room level, whereas peer effects in fraternity membership occur both at the room level and the entire dorm level. Overall, the data provide strong evidence for the existence of peer effects in student outcomes.

People approach pleasure and avoid pain. To discover the true nature of approach-avoidance motivation, psychologists need to move beyond this hedonic principle to the principles that underlie the different ways that it operates. One such principle is regulatory focus, which distinguishes self-regulation with a promotion focus (accomplishments and aspirations)from self-regulation with a prevention focus (safety and responsibilities). This principle is used to reconsider the fundamental nature of approach-avoidance, expectancy-value relations, and emotional and evaluative sensitivities. Both types of regulatory focus are applied to phenonomena that have been treated in terms of either promotion (e.g., well-being) or prevention (e.g., cognitive dissonance). Then, regulatory focus is distinguished from regulatory anticipation and regulatory reference, 2 other principles underlying the different ways that people approach pleasure and avoid pain. It seems that our entire psychical activity is bent upon procuring pleasure and avoiding pain, that it is automatically regulated by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE. (Freud, 1920/1952, p. 365) People are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain. From the ancient Greeks, through 17th- and 18thcentury British philosophers, to 20th-century psychologists, this hedonic or pleasure principle has dominated scholars ' understanding of people's motivation. It is the basic motivational assumption of theories across all areas of psychology, including theories of emotion in psychobiology (e.g., Gray, 1982), conditioning in animal learning

Despite the very extensive literature on dropout from higher education, much remains unknown about the nature of the dropout process. In large measure, the failure of past research to delineate more clearly the multiple characteristics of dropout can be traced to two major shortcomings; namely, inadequate atten-tion given to questions of definition and to the development of theoretical models that seek to explain, not simply to describe, the processes that bring individuals to leave institutions of higher education. With regard to the former, inadequate attention given to definition has often led researchers to lump together, under the rubric of dropout, forms of leaving behavior that are very differ-ent in character. It is not uncommon to find, for instance, research on dropout that fails to distinguish dropout resulting from academic failure from that which is the outcome of voluntary withdrawal. Nor is it uncommon to find permanent dropouts placed together with persons whose leaving may be temporary in I am indebted to my research assistant, John B. Cullen, for having made an extensive literature search and compiling summaries of the literature for me. I am also indebted to Professors Peter Moock, to John Weidman, and to an unknown reviewer for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The work reported here overlaps to a large extent work performed for the Office of

The factors that affect the supply of entrepreneurs are important but poorly understood. We study a sample of individuals who choose either to be employees or to run their own businesses. Four

Categorizations which humans make of the concrete world are not arbitrary but highly determined. In taxonomies of concrete objects, there is one level of abstraction at which the most basic category cuts are made. Basic categories are those which carry the most information, possess the highest category cue validity, and are, thus, the most differentiated from one another. The four experiments of Part I define basic objects by demonstrating that in taxonomies of common concrete nouns in English based on class inclusion, basic objects are the most inclusive categories whose members: (a) possess significant numbers of attributes in common, (b) have motor programs which are similar to one another, (c) have similar shapes, and (d) can be identified from averaged shapes of members of the class. The eight experiments of Part II explore implications of the structure of categories. Basic objects are shown to be the most inclusive categories for which a concrete image of the category as a whole can be formed, to be the first categorizations made during perception of the environment, to be the earliest categories sorted and earliest named by children, and to be the categories

This article presents a theory of how different types of discrepancies between self-state representa-tions are related to different kinds of emotional vulnerabilities. One domain of the self (actual; ideal; ought) and one standpoint on the self (own; significant other) constitute each type of self-state representation. It is proposed that different types of self-discrepancies represent different types of negative psychological situations that are associated with different kinds of discomfort. Discrepan-cies between the actual/own self-state (i.e., the self-concept) and ideal self-stales (i.e., representations of an individual's beliefs about his or her own or a significant other's hopes, wishes, or aspirations for the individual) signify the absence of positive outcomes, which is associated with dejection-related emotions (e.g., disappointment, dissatisfaction, sadness). In contrast, discrepancies between the ac-tual/own self-state and ought self-states (i.e., representations of an individual's beliefs about his or her own or a significant other's beliefs about the individual's duties, responsibilities, or obligations) signify the presence of negative outcomes, which is associated with agitation-related emotions (e.g., fear, threat, restlessness). Differences in both the relative magnitude and the accessibility of individu-als ' available types of self-discrepancies are predicted to be related to differences in the kinds of discomfort people are likely to experience. Correlational and experimental evidence supports the predictions of the model. Differences between serf-discrepancy theory and (a) other theories of in-compatible self-beliefs and (b) actual self negativity (e.g., low self-esteem) are discussed. The notion that people who hold conflicting or incompatible beliefs are likely to experience discomfort has had a long history in psychology. In social psychology, for example, various early theories proposed a relation between discomfort and specific kinds of "inconsistency " among a person's beliefs (e.g., Abelson

Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities. A variety of evidence is presented supporting this simple and compelling premise. Related streans of research are identified and drawn upon in devetopJng this concept and implications are derived for consumer behavior. Because the construct of exterxJed self involves consumer behavior rather than buyer behavior. It apjpears to be a much richer construct than previous formulations positing a relationship between self-concept and consumer brand choice. Hollow hands clasp ludicrous possessions because they are links in the chain of life If it breaks, they are truly losL—Dichlsr \ 964 W e cannot hope to understand consumer behav-ior without first gaining some understanding of ihe meanings that consumers attach to possessions..• \ key to understanding what possessions mean is rec-ognizing thai, knowingly or unknowingly, intention-ally or unintentionally, we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves. As Tuan argues, "Our fragile sense