Cultural differences in adolescent behaviour

Authors Avatar

Cultural differences in adolescent behaviour?

A01

Socialisation is culturally relative process as the research evidence on cultural differences in adolescent behaviour demonstrated.

Research avoidance for:

The individualistic (USA & Europe) Vs collectivist (Asia and China) dimension shows that different cultures have very different constructs of self.  For example individualistic cultures have an independent construct where sense of self is based on individual attributes and is egocentric, i.e. self cantered; and collectivist cultures have interdependent constructs where sense of self is based on the collective, i.e. how the individual feels as part of the group (Markus & Kitnyama, 1991).  These differences show that adolescence is culturally constructed.

Some collectivist cultures discourage peer relationships to maintain the tie to the family, whereas in individualistic culture the emphasis on independence means the family has less influence over peer relationships.

Collectivist cultures wit h clear rites of passage often do not have a clearly identifiable period of adolescence.  Mead (1998) reports that the transition from childhood to adulthood can be swift and is usually marked by a ritual that provides guidance on the adult role identity.  This suggests that adolescence is a cultural construction that results from individualistic cultures’ educational and career structure.  This provides young person with so many options and freedom of choice that crisis often occurs.  In the collectivist culture the young person is more acquiescent to parental guidance that often involves ‘following the fathers footsteps’ and is seen as a natural progression.

Join now!

The concept of adolescence is relatively new.  According to Shaffer (1993) it is an “invention” of the 20th century.  The concept of the teenager is even more recent as this developed in the 1950s.  This shows that adolescence is socially constructed and therefore a product of time and context, which reinforces the idea that it, is culturally specific.

Sub - cultural differences in identity formation during adolescence provide further support that this is culturally constructed.  Adolescents from ethnic minorities tend to take longer to achieve identity formulation.  This makes sense because it is probably harder to curve out an ...

This is a preview of the whole essay