Opposite-Sex Siblings and Marital Beliefs Among Emerging Adults

This chapter begins to explore how parents and families influence emerging adults’ beliefs about marriage. Parents are the primary focus. Two key roles parents play in their children’s lives in terms of future behavior and current orientations are socialization and the intergenerational transmission of values. For emerging adults with happily married parents, many of the marital paradoxes appeared to vanish. The authors discuss how having never-married or divorced parents affects marital beliefs. Observing conflict generally appears to diminish many emerging adults’ view of marriage regardless of the current marital status of their parents. The influence of siblings is also explored. Parents and other family influences appear to be one of the key foundations on which emerging adults have built their internal conceptualization of modern marriage.

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Marital Beliefs Among African American Emerging Adults: The Roles of Community Context, Family Background, and Relationship Experiences

Journal of Family Issues ◽

10.1177/0192513x16644640 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 39 (2) ◽

pp. 352-382 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ashley Brooke Barr ◽

Ronald L. Simons

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Emerging Adults ◽

Transition To Adulthood ◽

Family Background ◽

Community Context ◽

Marriage Markets ◽

Relationship Experiences ◽

Marital Beliefs ◽

The Life Course

The current study explores multiple contexts of development—community, family, and relationship—that predict African American emerging adults’ marital beliefs. Findings suggest that nonmarital relationship experiences and childhood community contexts are robust and independent predictors of marital beliefs. The important role of childhood community context found here suggests that communities may not only be indicative of opportunity structure in local marriage markets but may also be indicative of the virtual structure that shapes marital meaning. By offering a better understanding of the extent to which marital beliefs are embedded in broader community, family, and relationship contexts, the current findings may be used to better specify promising models aiming to understand the causal implications of these beliefs across the transition to adulthood and later in the life course.

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Growing Up with a Little Help from their Friends in Emerging Adulthood

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795574.013.008 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Carolyn McNamara Barry ◽

Stephanie D. Madsen ◽

Alyssa DeGrace

Keyword(s):

Emerging Adults ◽

Relationship Status ◽

Developmental Tasks ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Growing Up ◽

Friends With Benefits ◽

College Career ◽

Rapid Changes ◽

Opposite Sex ◽

Adult Roles

Friendships are vital to emerging adults’ adjustment due to the rapid changes that come during this decade (e.g., leaving their families of origin, delaying adult roles of marriage and parenthood). Indeed, friends are often central to emerging adults’ lives and can afford immeasurable support as they tackle developmental tasks, such as identity. This chapter reviews the literature on the types (same vs. opposite sex vs. friends with benefits), formation processes, and qualities of emerging adults’ friendships. The authors discuss variations in friendships as a function of gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity/culture. Additionally, the authors note the extent to which emerging adults’ friendships change as a result of transitions concerning college, career, relationship status, and parenthood. Next, the authors document the mechanisms of friendship influence and the extent of this influence on salient developmental tasks for emerging adults. They conclude by identifying implications of the findings for researchers and practitioners.

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“I’m Scared because Divorce Sucks”: Parental Divorce and the Marital Paradigms of Emerging Adults

Journal of Family Issues ◽

10.1177/0192513x19880933 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (6) ◽

pp. 711-738

Author(s):

Brian J. Willoughby ◽

Spencer James ◽

Ian Marsee ◽

Madison Memmott ◽

Renée Peltz Dennison

Keyword(s):

Emerging Adults ◽

Mixed Method ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Parental Divorce ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Mixed Method Design ◽

Attitudes Toward Marriage ◽

Quantitative Results ◽

Marital Beliefs ◽

The Impact

Previous studies have suggested that parental divorce influences the relational beliefs and orientation toward marriage of adolescents and emerging adults. Most of this previous work has been limited to links between parental divorce and global attitudes toward marriage or attitudes toward divorce. Using a mixed-method design, the current study explored links between parental divorce and various aspects of emerging adults’ marital paradigms using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and qualitative data among a sample of unmarried emerging adults. Quantitative results suggested that parental divorce was linked to a variety of negative marital beliefs including less overall marital importance, less marital permanence, and less marital centrality. There was no evidence of longitudinal changes in these associations over time. Qualitative results among emerging adults with divorced parents revealed several key themes in how emerging adults viewed the impact of parental divorce, suggesting implications for perceived interpersonal competence and the internalization of negative marital beliefs stemming from parental role modeling.

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A Longitudinal Study of Mental Health in Emerging Adults

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000132 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 73 (3) ◽

pp. 135-141 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Monica S. Bachmann ◽

Hansjörg Znoj ◽

Katja Haemmerli

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Longitudinal Study ◽

Emerging Adults ◽

Poor Mental Health ◽

Need Satisfaction ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Consistency Model ◽

Negative Effect ◽

The Cross ◽

Health Model

Emerging adulthood is a time of instability. This longitudinal study investigated the relationship between mental health and need satisfaction among emerging adults over a period of five years and focused on gender-specific differences. Two possible causal models were examined: (1) the mental health model, which predicts that incongruence is due to the presence of impaired mental health at an earlier point in time; (2) the consistency model, which predicts that impaired mental health is due to a higher level of incongruence reported at an earlier point in time. Emerging adults (N = 1,017) aged 18–24 completed computer-assisted telephone interviews in 2003 (T1), 2005 (T2), and 2008 (T3). The results indicate that better mental health at T1 predicts a lower level of incongruence two years later (T2), when prior level of incongruence is controlled for. The same cross-lagged effect is shown for T3. However, the cross-lagged paths from incongruence to mental health are marginally associated when prior mental health is controlled for. No gender differences were found in the cross-lagged model. The results support the mental health model and show that incongruence does not have a long-lasting negative effect on mental health. The results highlight the importance of identifying emerging adults with poor mental health early to provide support regarding need satisfaction.

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A New Technique to Measure the Level of Interest Using Heartbeat-Evoked Brain Potential

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000257 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 15-22

Author(s):

Kohei Fuseda ◽

Jun’ichi Katayama

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Random Order ◽

Overt Response ◽

Brain Potential ◽

Probe Technique ◽

Dynamic Stimuli ◽

Attentional Resources ◽

Opposite Sex ◽

A New Technique ◽

Task Irrelevant

Abstract. Interest is a positive emotion related to attention. The event-related brain potential (ERP) probe technique is a useful method to evaluate the level of interest in dynamic stimuli. However, even in the irrelevant probe technique, the probe is presented as a physical stimulus and steals the observer’s attentional resources, although no overt response is required. Therefore, the probe might become a problematic distractor, preventing deep immersion of participants. Heartbeat-evoked brain potential (HEP) is a brain activity, time-locked to a cardiac event. No probe is required to obtain HEP data. Thus, we aimed to investigate whether the HEP can be used to evaluate the level of interest. Twenty-four participants (12 males and 12 females) watched attractive and unattractive individuals of the opposite sex in interesting and uninteresting videos (7 min each), respectively. We performed two techniques each for both the interesting and the uninteresting videos: the ERP probe and the HEP techniques. In the former, somatosensory stimuli were presented as task-irrelevant probes while participants watched videos: frequent (80%) and infrequent (20%) stimuli were presented at each wrist in random order. In the latter, participants watched videos without the probe. The P2 amplitude in response to the somatosensory probe was smaller and the positive wave amplitudes of HEP were larger while watching the videos of attractive individuals than while watching the videos of unattractive ones. These results indicate that the HEP technique is a useful method to evaluate the level of interest without an external probe stimulus.

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The Two Components of Social Desirability and their Relations to Resting Frontal Brain Asymmetry

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001.26.1.29 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 29-42 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Cornelia A. Pauls ◽

Jan Wacker ◽

Nicolas W. Crost

Keyword(s):

Impression Management ◽

Big Five ◽

Hemispheric Asymmetry ◽

Incentive Motivation ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Frontal Brain ◽

Self Reports ◽

Opposite Sex ◽

The Relationship ◽

Α Band

Abstract. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between resting frontal hemispheric asymmetry (FHA) in the low α band (8-10.25 Hz) and the two components of socially desirable responding, i.e., self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) and impression management (IM), in an opposite-sex encounter. In addition, Big Five facets, self-reports of emotion, and spontaneous eye blink rate (BR), a noninvasive indicator of functional dopamine activity, were assessed. SDE as well as IM were related to relatively greater right-than-left activity in the low α band (i.e., relative left frontal activation; LFA) and to self-reported positive affect (PA), but only SDE was related to BR. We hypothesized that two independent types of motivational approach tendencies underlie individual differences in FHA and PA: affiliative motivation represented by IM and agentic incentive motivation represented by SDE. Whereas the relationship between SDE and PA was mediated by BR, the relationship between SDE and FHA was not.

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