We believe that children are born with innate tendencies, called temperament.
We believe that the temperament of children and their environment interact to influence their development.
We grouped infants into three types of temperament: easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up.
We wrote the parenting book, Know your Child, based on our research.
Catherine Cooper
I study how culture influences personality.
I believe that ethnic minority adolescents must take into account their culture of origin and mainstream culture in developing their identities.
I say that a family environment that fosters both individuality and connectedness is crucial in adolescent identity development.
I developed definitions of individuality and connectedness as descriptions of family environments.
Erik Erikson
My fifth developmental stage is identity versus identity confusion.
Psychosocial moratorium is my term for the gap between childhood security and adult autonomy that adolescents experience.
I feel that if adolescents don't resolve their identity crisis, then they suffer from identity confusion.
Two core ingredients in my theory are personality and role experimentation.
I believe identity is a self-portrait composed of many pieces including political identity.
Susan Harter
I believe that adolescent self-understanding is complex and involves a number of aspects of the self.
I also believe that the self fluctuates across situations and across time.
In one of my studies, I asked 7th, 9th, and 11th graders to describe themselves.
I found that the number of contradictory self-descriptions increased between the 7th and 9th graders.
I developed the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents.
Stuart Hauser
I study how family processes relate to adolescent identity development.
I believe that parents who engage in enabling (supportive behaviors) foster identity development more than parents who engage in constraining (judgmental behaviors).
My research interests include the intergenerational transmission of vulnerability and resilience.
Reed Larson and Maryse Richards
We study the emotional lives of adolescent and their families using the experience sampling method.
We research how family members transmit emotions to each other.
Our research suggests that adolescents' emotions tend to be fleeting and intense.
James Marcia
Erik Erikson influenced me.
I believe there are four identity states corresponding to the presence or absence of a crisis and commitment.
I say adolescents experience at least one if not several of these states.
Critics say I trivialize the seriousness of Erikson's theory of crisis and commitment.
Walter Mischel
I am a social cognitive theorist.
I study inconsistency in personality.
I believe that personality varies depending on the situation.
Jean Phinney
I developed the concept of ethnic identity.
I believe that adolescents from ethnic minority groups have an additional task in identity development that requires them to develop an ethnic identity.
I believe that ethnic identity is influenced by generational factors and age.
I say having a positive ethnic identity is important to the well-being of ethnic minority youth.
Allan Waterman
I believe that important changes occur in identity beyond adolescence.
My research suggests that many college students (especially in their first couple of years of college) are still exploring their identity.
I was the president of the Society for Research on Identity Formation.
