The short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been was written by Joyce Carol Oats. The plotline revolves around Connie, the prototypical emerging adolescent. She has a sister, June, whom her mother always compliments, and father who is almost always silent after a long day of work. Why does she rebel against her family and the values that her mother praises? This essay will discuss the stages of adolescence, including the factors that separate problematic and socially acceptable development. Although the climax arguably takes place at the end of the story, the focus of discussion will be on her maturation instead of the event itself. The first paragraph will discuss the stages of development, the second will demonstrate where connie
…show more content…
The imaginary audience is a concept that any youth will believe that they are the focus of any social activity. An example of this would be believing that the ketchup which was accidentally spilled on your shirt at prom was as embarrassing to everyone else as it was to yourself. Personal fable is more simple, it is the internal belief that the youth is invulnerable. Social theory predicts that the personal fable is what leads to experimentation with drugs, sex, etc. The interesting results found by the study were that troubled youth and non-troubled youth display no statistical difference of egocentrism. Essentially, all teenages are rather self focused. The only difference they did find was in epistemic reasoning. Furthermore, it was shown that troubled teens often rely on defended realism whereas non-troubled teens relied on postskeptical rationalism. As mentioned earlier, epistemic reasoning is the method which people use to make sense of new information that causes uncertainty. Defended realism allows an individual to differentiate between facts and opinion. In the book, Epistemic Cognition and Development: The Psychology of Justification and Truth, Moshman goes on to add, “This distinction enables them to preserve an epistemic core of
The imaginary audience is a concept that any youth will believe that they are the focus of any social activity. An example of this would be believing that the ketchup which was accidentally spilled on your shirt at prom was as embarrassing to everyone else as it was to yourself. Personal fable is more simple, it is the internal belief that the youth is invulnerable. Social theory predicts that the personal fable is what leads to experimentation with drugs, sex, etc. The interesting results found by the study were that troubled youth and non-troubled youth display no statistical difference of egocentrism. Essentially, all teenages are rather self focused. The only difference they did find was in epistemic reasoning. Furthermore, it was shown that troubled teens often rely on defended realism whereas non-troubled teens relied on postskeptical rationalism. As mentioned earlier, epistemic reasoning is the method which people use to make sense of new information that causes uncertainty. Defended realism allows an individual to differentiate between facts and opinion. In the book, Epistemic Cognition and Development: The Psychology of Justification and Truth, Moshman goes on to add, “This distinction enables them to preserve an epistemic core of