In Shurts and Myers’ article “A Examination of Liking, Love Styles, and Wellness Among Emerging Adults: Implications for Social Wellness and Development,” emerging adulthood is discussed, as well as how the emotional and psychological factors found in this period of life shape their development. After high school but before finishing their education, many young adults enter emerging adulthood, a period of time where they are still not really considered adults, but where they are given the responsibilities of adults. The researchers perform a study wherein wellness factors were examined and weighed against a sample of college students, seeing whether or not they had a high degree of self-wellness, and cultivated good relationships with their peers.
Shurts and Myers denoted several wellness models within the range of emerging adulthood; the Indivisible Self model contains the Creative Self, Coping Self, Social Self, Essential Self, and Physical Self, which are all examples of these. Each of them showcase an individual aspect of a personality or identity that is necessary to develop in order to create an emotionally balanced adult. The developmental changes that take place within a college environment during emerging adulthood dramatically affects how one copes with social wellness, loving and liking others. Their findings concluded that college students have incredibly high levels of social wellness, and that this can be determined by their healthy level of liking and loving that occurs within their lives.
Shurts and Myers make it clear that these findings would be very useful in a number of contexts. For example, it can be very helpful to undergraduate counselors who are dealing with emerging adults on a regular basis. What has been discovered about the liking and loving habits of young adults can help them deal with developmental problems encountered by their patients. Healthier relationships can come about with the knowledge that has been gleaned from observing many emerging adults in this study. The more we are informed of our own habits, the more conscious we are of them, and the better we can examine why we do them. It can lead them to find out exactly what is wrong in their interpersonal and sexual relationships. These reasons and more make this paper reputable and important to its field.
If I were to write a research paper on the topic of social development in adulthood, I would use this article in an examination of how, even as people enter adulthood, there is still a transitional period, and it can often lead to continued development in one’s identity and desires. This article is great for showcasing the specific aspects of an emerging adult’s personality, as well as their need to like and love, finding interpersonal relationships. That period of our lives is when we explore and learn about ourselves, being open to others and discovering what being in relationships (whether platonic or sexual) would be like. Using this paper would go a long way toward exploring that facet of emerging adulthood – the time when a child transitions into an adult and finds their way in the world.
I elected to work on this topic because I find it absolutely interesting that we learn most of our true identities in emergent adulthood; we learn a lot about how adolescence affects us and shapes our personalities, but not much about what happens once we become adults. Besides the midlife crisis, emergent adulthood is the most important adult-based development period, and I wished to learn more about it. The relationships we have with people are some of the most important things in our lives, and exploring that phase of our emergent adulthood is also very interesting to me.
