The Functional Regulation of Adolescent Dating Relationships and Sexual Behavior: An Interaction of Goals, Strategies, and Situations

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on showing how the interaction between personal goals and daily life situations is associated with functional self-regulation, using as a model a particular life period, namely adolescence, and a particular age-graded task, namely social dating. First, we examine how individual differences, such as attachment styles and ego identity, and subcultural factors, such as ethnicity and gender, are associated with the relative predominance of intimacy and interdependence as a goal in social dating. Second, we focus on how an intimacy goal in turn is associated with particular predictable patterns of task pursuit in daily life, including preferences for different types of situations, the use of specific strategies for goal pursuit, and the elicitation of distinct types of support. Third, we consider how particular aspects of dating situations, such as one's partner's orientation toward intimacy, become especially significant affordances for functional behavior, such as dating satisfaction and the regulation of safer sexual behavior, for individuals with predominant intimacy goals. Finally, we suggest the relevance of this life task model of functional behavior for diverse life tasks across the life span. Introduction A life task perspective in personality psychology posits that in order to understand individuals' behavior in daily life, one needs to understand the broader life problems or tasks that they are working on as well as the specific strategies that they are implementing to work on them (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987).