11.4 Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood

Dialectical Thinking and Reflective Thought

One form of cognitive processing refined during early adulthood is dialectical thinking, the ability to remain practical, flexible, and open to the multiple factors and solutions in a given situation. Where adolescents think in absolute terms, seeing something as either good or bad, adults are more likely to realize life is full of gray areas and that an event might be a “‘double-edged” sword or a “blessing in disguise”. For example, breaking up with a romantic partner may result in someone finding a more fulfilling relationship or being able to pursue goals they’d previously put on hold. This ability to combine two opposing points of view is at the core of dialectical thinking (Figure 11.18).

Figure 11.18 Though most adolescents and emerging adults can attain formal operational thinking, or the ability to think abstractly, we often need experience to do so. The saying ‘practice makes progress’ perfectly describes the way we hone this ability. (credit: “What’s She Thinking?” by Chad Madden/Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0)

Solving adult problems also requires us to constantly consider many sources of information. Reflective thought relies on logical thought processes such as continuous, active evaluation of information and beliefs using evidence and past experiences. It allows us to continually question facts, draw inferences, and make connections between different types of information (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). It emerges between 20 and 25 years of age, coinciding with brain myelination. Higher education may also stimulate and hone reflective thinking (Sherman, 2021), as students often need to relate new information to old, think through hypothetical situations, and apply their knowledge and skills to solve unfamiliar problems and issues. For example, when learning about the country of Morocco, which is located in Northern Africa near Spain, a learner may be surprised to learn of a Middle Eastern country that is so far from the core group of countries typically associated with the Middle East. In addition, the learner will need and have the ability to hypothesize how Middler Eastern culture may take on different aspects given the distance of Morocco from the Middle East, and its close proximity to Western Europe. Similarly, changes in crystallized intelligence also occur and are believed to be mediated by both an individual’s life experiences and, for those pursuing a degree, the college courses they take (Hochberg & Konner, 2020).

Heuristics

Our thinking also becomes more efficient in early adulthood. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that help us process information more quickly. They frequently simplify a problem or decision point and reduce the time and energy needed to come up with a solution. Because our brains are metabolically “expensive,” meaning they require a lot of energy to function, being efficient when facing mental tasks makes sense. Common heuristics are the familiarity heuristic, affect heuristic, and scarcity heuristic. All have their advantages and their downsides.

The familiarity heuristic makes us feel more comfortable with things or people we have experience with than with those we have yet to experience or meet. Often, we will choose the most comfortable or familiar option, but then we may never know whether the novel thing or person was a better choice. For example, you may buy apples every week because apples are a familiar choice, not considering less familiar fruits like mangoes, even though you might enjoy mangoes more than apples if you tried them.

The affect heuristic causes us to use emotions more than other factors when making a decision. We can also consider this similar to intuition or a “gut instinct”. Decisions we make using the affect heuristic aren’t always bad—for example, a person on a job interview “gets a bad feeling” about the way the employees interact with each other, declines a job offer, and later learns of a hostile environment lawsuit against that company. However, using the affect heuristic can also cause us to make impractical decisions, such as letting our emotions talk us into adopting a rescue dog even though our living arrangements aren’t appropriate for a dog.

Finally, the scarcity heuristic causes us to believe that the rarer or less available something is, the more valuable it is. Advertisers sometimes count on the scarcity heuristic to sell products, telling us that “quantities are limited” and we should “act now”. Unfortunately, this can cause us to waste money on things we don’t really need.

While heuristics can help us use short-cuts to make decisions, they aren’t always the best way to make a decision. An emerging adult might have ideas about what it would be like to live in a big city based on what they've seen in movies and be excited about all the activities to explore and people to meet, but not realize potential drawbacks, such as the high cost of living, traffic, pollution, and so on. Taking the time to think through a decision like moving to a new area should be done rationally and purposefully, not using a heuristic.

Problem Solving and Divergent Thinking

The use of both convergent and divergent thought to solve problems increases during early adulthood. Convergent thought uses a known solution to deal with a problem, whereas divergent thought creates a new solution. Divergent thought is closely associated with creativity because it often leads to “thinking outside the box” or creating multiple potential ways to solve a problem (Runco, 2014). Although they’re different ways of thinking, convergent and divergent thought can be used together. By combining divergent thought processes with reflective thought, and by honing convergent thought processes, people can gain a deeper understanding of a situation or problem and come up with multiple solutions. A college student who wants to make more friends could use divergent thinking to brainstorm all the possible ways they could do that (e.g., joining clubs, playing intramural sports, attending tutoring sessions) and then use convergent thinking to gather more information (e.g., what available clubs there are) and narrow down options based on factors like time commitment, interests, and other characteristics (e.g., the Chemistry Club is only for chemistry majors, rushing a fraternity would be too expensive).

Theory of Mind and Empathy

Like many other cognitive skills, theory of mind appears in early childhood and continues to develop as we grow up. Cognitive theory of mind is the ability to draw conclusions about another person’s intentions and beliefs, and affective theory of mind is the ability to draw conclusions about another person’s feelings. In general, both types of theory of mind improve as we age (Baksh et al., 2021; Kilford & Blakemore, 2020; Velikonja et al., 2019), giving us a better ability to form connections and interact with others. Empathy also develops in early childhood and improves as we mature (Figure 11.19). As with theory of mind, we can consider both cognitive empathy (being able to adopt someone’s point of view) and affective empathy (being able to vicariously experience someone’s emotions). A potentially important component of empathy is our ability to recognize and process faces, including facial displays of emotion. Several studies have indicated that this ability improves from adolescence to emerging adulthood due to maturation of relevant parts of the brain (Gur & Gur, 2016; Kilford & Blakemore, 2020; Tousignant et al., 2016; Velikonja et al., 2019).

Figure 11.19 Showing empathy is an important interpersonal skill. (credit: “Student marching against police brutality” by Vitor Marinho/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Moral Reasoning and Prosocial Behavior

Another theory that touches on social cognition related to our behavior is Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Remember from earlier chapters that in Kohlberg’s theory, emerging adults are more likely than teenagers and children to use postconventional reasoning, considering broader ethical principles such as justice and fairness to make moral decisions. However, Kohlberg’s theory has some limitations, such as ignoring the interpersonal aspects of morality and focusing too much on objective justice instead of the needs of others (Miller et al., 2018). Kohlberg (1969) also felt that men advanced farther than in their moral development and viewed women as deficient in their moral reasoning abilities. These ideas met with criticism from, among others, Carol Gilligan, who was a research assistant of Kohlberg. She consequently developed her own ideas of moral development, arguing that women aren’t deficient in their moral reasoning, but rather just reason differently than men do. Specifically, Gilligan proposed that in their moral reasoning, girls and women focus more on staying connected and the importance of interpersonal relationships (Gilligan, 1982). Another criticism of the theory is that Kohlberg’s stories, such as the Heinz dilemma, were culturally biased and did not apply well to all cultures, particularly collectivistic cultures that prioritize interdependence more than independence (Jia & Krettenauer, 2017; Moheghi et al., 2020). Indeed, culture does play a role in cognitive development, as we’ll discover in the next section.

Early adulthood may mean increased moral dilemmas as well as more opportunities to behave in moral ways. Lapsley and colleagues (2023) point out that the moral dilemmas of adult life are often ambiguous and solving them requires considering multiple factors, such as avoiding harm versus doing good, the long-term consequences of the decision, and whether the punishment fits the crime. This maps onto the elements of post-formal thought described earlier. Emerging adults are also faster and more flexible in their moral decision-making than adolescents are (Padilla-Walker, 2016).

Theory of mind, empathy, and moral reasoning can all affect prosocial behavior by giving us more information we can use to help others. When we can both consider other people’s perspectives and identify with them, we can better meet their needs. Being able to consider multiple dimensions of complex moral situations enables us to make decisions that have a better chance of being beneficial. Additionally, in early adulthood we may have more opportunities and more ability to engage in prosocial behavior by, for example, voting or giving a friend a ride somewhere after their car breaks down (Padilla-Walker, 2016).

Variations in Practical Thinking

In general, collectivistic cultures show a preference for a holistic style of thinking that relies on contextual information, situational attributions, low tolerance for ambiguity, and dislike of competition. Western cultures, on the other hand, tend to be more individualistic and emphasize dispositional (personality) attributions (explanations for behavior), competition, and reliance on absolute facts, with a higher tolerance for ambiguity (Grossman, 2018; Her & Haron, 2016; Rachev & Petkova, 2019). These differences appear to influence some specific aspects of cognition. For example, Rachev and Petkova discovered that Bulgarian business owners were extremely susceptible to the affect heuristic, and attributed this to a collectivistic tendency to prioritize emotional satisfaction over competition; in other words, because emotional factors are so important, they become a primary focus when making decisions (2019). A study comparing Israeli and Taiwanese children ages 4–11 found that the Israeli children demonstrated the scarcity heuristic by age 7, while the Taiwanese children never showed it. The researchers explained this difference in individualistic/collectivistic terms: When an item is viewed as scarce, members of individualistic cultures are more likely to want it because it helps them stand out, but this isn’t a priority for members of individualistic cultures (Diesendruck et al., 2018). While this is child research and not adult research, it provides more support for the idea that cultural factors may influence use of specific cognitive strategies, and that this influence may start well before adulthood.

Culture may also affect views of convergent and divergent thinking as well as creativity. Specifically, collectivistic cultures may prioritize convergent thinking over divergent thinking because it focuses on finding the “right answer” and therefore reducing uncertainty (Her & Haron, 2016). Consistent with this, Paletz and colleagues note that Eastern and Western cultures tend to define creativity somewhat differently; Eastern cultures tend to define creativity in terms of appropriateness to the context of prevailing cultural norms, while Western cultures tend to define it in terms of novelty (2018). This may influence the way people generate solutions to problems. For example, a person from a Western culture may consider all possible solutions to a problem, regardless of how feasible they are, but someone from an Eastern culture may only consider solutions that are practical (Figure 11.20).

Figure 11.20 Divergent thinking and creativity may involve scientific exploration, not just artistic pursuits. (credit: “NIH Medical Research Scholars Program” by NIH Image Gallery/Flickr, Public Domain)

Life circumstances other than culture can also affect adult cognition. Research comparing the use of availability heuristics in Italy and Sweden has demonstrated that while residents of both countries use these heuristics, the focus varies depending on what’s most salient to residents of those countries. Specifically, when asked to estimate the likelihood of flood, drought, and wildfires, the respondents rated as more likely the specific events that had occurred in their country most recently (Di Baldassarre et al., 2021). Thus, while the ability to use heuristics is universal, the information that we use to shape our judgments depends on experience.

Variations in Social Cognition

Specific cultural values may affect social cognition. For example, the value of familism, prevalent in Latino culture, emphasizes the importance of helping others and is related to expressed prosocial tendencies (Knight et al., 2016; 2018). A study of college students in India, Japan, and the United States found that the Japanese and American students were more likely to use exchange norms (either repaying a debt or anticipating future benefit) when deciding whether to help a friend, while Indian students were more likely to use communal norms (helping with no expectation of reciprocity; Miller et al., 2017). Also, a study comparing European American and Hindu Indian adults found that when evaluating the reasons why a person did something (e.g., didn’t help someone in need), European American participants tended to attribute this behavior to personality characteristics (e.g., being selfish), while Hindu Indian participants tended to attribute it to contextual factors (e.g., not wanting to be late for work; Miller et al., 2018). This suggests that while the ability to consider others’ inner states is common across cultures, there may be cultural differences in what people prioritize when making those judgments Figure 11.21.

Figure 11.21 People help each other for many reasons. (credit: “AFGE Volunteers at Mobile Food Pantry” by AFGE/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Contextual factors other than culture may also be relevant. For example, people who experience autism spectrum disorder have more difficulty than neurotypical people on tasks requiring theory of mind (e.g., Baksh et al., 2021; Sasson et al., 2019), although this may depend to some extent on underlying general intellectual ability (Sasson et al., 2019). Also, when asked to explain their motivation for performing prosocial acts, people with autism spectrum disorder tend to provide egocentric answers (“I’m nice”) instead of answers that indicate larger understanding of social norms (“It’s important to help people”; Baksh et al., 2021).