Storm Adolescent and Stress, Reconsidered
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett
University of Maryland College Park
G. S. Hall's (1904) view that adolescence is a period of
heightened "storm and stress" is reconsidered in light of
contemporary research. The author provides a brief history
of the storm-and-stress view and examines 3 key aspects of
this view: conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risk
behavior. In all 3 areas, evidence supports a modified
storm-and-stress view that takes into account individual
differences and cultural variations. Not all adolescents
experience storm and stress, but storm and stress is more
likely during adolescence than at other ages. Adolescent
storm and stress tends to be lower in traditional cultures
than in the West but may increase as globalization increases individualism. Similar issues apply to minority
cultures in American society. Finally, although the general
public is sometimes portrayed by scholars as having a
stereotypical view of adolescent storm and stress, both
scholars and the general public appear to support a modified storm-and-stress view.
N
early 100 years after G. Stanley Hall (1904)
proposed that adolescence is inherently a time of
storm and stress, his view continues to be addressed by psychologists. For the most part, contemporary
psychologists reject the view that adolescent storm and
stress is universal and inevitable (e.g., Eccles et al., 1993;
Offer & Schonert-Reichl, 1992; Petersen et al., 1993;
Steinberg & Levine, 1997). However, the storm-and-stress
view is usually invoked by psychologists only in passing,
in the course of addressing some other topic. Rarely has the
storm-and-stress view been considered directly, and rarely
have its merits and limitations been evaluated in depth.
Hall initiated the scientific study of adolescence, and
since his time (especially in the past 20 years), research on
adolescence has produced a great deal of information that
bears on the question of adolescent storm and stress. As the
centennial of Hall's (1904) landmark two-volume work
approaches, this may be an appropriate time to evaluate the
merits of the view for which he is best known today. I
argue here that a case can be made for the validity of a
modified storm-and-stress view. The claim that adolescent
storm and stress is characteristic of all adolescents and that
the source of it is purely biological is clearly false. However, evidence supports the existence of some degree of
storm and stressat least for adolescents in the middleclass American majority culturewith respect to conflict
with parents, mood disruptions, and risk behavior. Not all
adolescents experience storm and stress in these areas, but
adolescence is the period when storm and stress is more
May 1999 American Psychologist
Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/99/S2.00
Vol. 54, No. 5, 317-326
likely to occur than at other ages. I emphasize that there are
individual differences among adolescents in the extent to
which they exhibit storm and stress and that there are
cultural variations in the pervasiveness of adolescent storm
and stress.
Storm and Stress: A Brief History
Hall (1904) was the first to consider the storm-and-stress
issue explicitly and formally in relation to adolescent development, but he was not the first in the history of Western
thought to remark on the emotional and behavioral distinctiveness of adolescence. Aristotle stated that youth "are
heated by Nature as drunken men by wine." Socrates
characterized youth as inclined to "contradict their parents"
and "tyrannize their teachers." Rousseau relied on a stormy
metaphor in describing adolescence: "As the roaring of the
waves precedes the tempest, so the murmur of rising passions announces the tumultuous change.... Keep your
hand upon the helm," he advised parents, "or all is lost"
(Rousseau, 1762/1962, pp. 172-173).
Around the time Rousseau was writing, an influential
genre of German literature was developing, known as
"sturm und drang" literatureroughly translated as "storm
and stress." The quintessential work of the genre was
Goethe's (1774/1989) The Sorrows of Young Werther, a
story about a young man who commits suicide in despair
over his doomed love for a married woman. There were
numerous other stories at the time that depicted youthful
anguish and angst. The genre gave rise to popular use of the
term "storm and stress," which Hall (1904) adopted a
century later when writing his magnum opus on adolescent
development.
Hall (1904) favored the Lamarckian evolutionary
ideas that were considered by many prominent thinkers in
the early 20th century (Freud and Jung included) to be a
better explanation of evolution than Darwin's theory of
natural selection. In Lamarck's now-discredited theory,
evolution takes place as a result of accumulated experience.
Organisms pass on their characteristics from one generation to the next not in the form of genes (which were
Editor's note. Ann S. Masten served as action editor for this article.
Author's note. I thank Christy Buchanan, Lene Jensen, and Reed Larson
for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Department of Human Development, University of
Maryland, 3304 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20742. Electronic
mail may be sent to [e-mail].
317
Jeffrey Jensen
Arnett
Photo by Knudson
Photography
unknown at the time Lamarck and Darwin devised their
theories), but in the form of memories and acquired characteristics. Thus, Hall, considering development during
adolescence, judged it to be "suggestive of some ancient
period of storm and stress" (1904, Vol. 1, p. xiii). In his
view, there must have been a period of human evolution
that was extremely difficult and tumultuous; the memory of
that period had been passed ever since from one generation
to the next and was recapitulated in the development of
each individual as the storm and stress of adolescent development. To Hall, this legacy of storm and stress was
particularly evident in adolescents' tendency to question
and contradict their parents, in their mood disruptions, and
in their propensity for reckless and antisocial behavior.
Although Hall is often portrayed as depicting adolescent storm and stress as universal and biological, in fact his
view was more nuanced. He acknowledged individual differences, noting for example that conflict with parents was
more likely for adolescents with "ruder natures" (1904,
Vol. 2, p. 79). Also, he believed that a tendency toward
storm and stress in adolescence was universal and biologically based, but that culture influenced adolescents' expression and experience of it. He saw siorm and stress as
more likely to occur in the United States of his day than in
"older lands with more conservative traditions" (1904, Vol.
1, p. xvi). In his view, the storm and stress of American
adolescence was aggravated by growing urbanization, with
all its temptations to vice, and by the clash between the
sedentary quality of urban life and what he saw as adolescents' inherent need for activity and exploration. Hall also
believed that adolescent storm and stress in his time was
aggravated by the failure of home, school, and religious
organizations to recognize the true nature and potential
perils of adolescence and to adapt their institutions accord-
318
ingly, a view not unlike that of many more recent scholars
(e.g., Eccles et al., 1993; Simmons & Blythe, 1987).
In the century since Hall's work established adolescence as an area of scientific study, the debate over adolescent storm and stress has simmered steadily and boiled
to the surface periodically. Anthropologists, led by Margaret Mead (1928), countered the claim thai a tendency
toward storm and stress in adolescence is universal and
biological by describing non-Weslern cultures in which
adolescence was neither stormy nor stressful. In conirasi,
psychoanalytic theorists, particularly Anna Freud (1946,
1958, 1968, 1969). have been (he most outspoken proponents of the storm-and-stress view. Like Hall, psychoanalytic theorists viewed adolescent storm and stress as rooted
in the recapitulation of earlier experiences, but as a recapitulation of ontogenetic oedipai conflicts from early childhood rather than phylogenetic epochs (Bios, 1962). This
recapitulation of Oedipai conflicts provoked emotional volatility (as the adolescent ego attempted to gain ascendancy
over resurgent instinctual drives), depressed mood (as the
adolescent mourned the renunciation of the Oedipai parent), and conflict with parents (in the course of making this
renunciation; Bios, 1962). Furthermore, the resurgence of
instinctual drives was regarded as likely to be acted out in
"dissocial, even criminal" behavior (Freud, 1968, p. 18).
Anna Freud (1958, 1968, 1969) viewed adolescents
who did not experience storm and stress with great suspicion, claiming that their outward calm concealed the inward reality dial they must have "built up excessive defenses against their drive activities and are now crippled by
the results" (1968, p. 15). She, much more than Hal!,
viewed storm and stress as universal and immutable, to the
extent that its absence signified psychopathology: "To be
normal during the adolescen! period is by itself abnormal"
(1958. p. 267).
In recent decades, two types of studies concerning
adolescent storm and stress have appeared. A handful of
studies, mostly by Buchanan and Holmbeck (Buchanan,
1998; Buchanan et al., 1990; Buchanan & Holmbeck,
1998; Holmbeck & Hill, 1988; Offer, Ostrov, & Howard,
1981). have focused on public perceptions of adolescence
as a time of storm and stress. These studies (using American middle-class samples) have consistently found that
most people in the American majority culture perceive
adolescence as a time of relative storm and stress. For
example, Buchanan et al. (1990) found that the majority of
both parents and teachers agreed with statements such as
"early adolescence is a difficult time of life for children and
their parents/teachers." Buchanan and Holmbeck (1998)
reported that college students and parents of early adolescents viewed adolescents as more likely than elementary
school children to have problems such as symptoms of
internalizing disorders (e.g., anxiousness, insecurity, and
depression) and risk taking/rebelliousness (e.g., recklessness, impulsivity, and rudeness). Similarly, the majority of
college students surveyed by Holmbeck and Hill (1988)
agreed with statements such as "adolescents frequently
fight with their parents."
May 1999 American Psychologist
A second type of contemporary study has addressed
the actual occurrence of adolescent storm and stress, in the
specific areas of conflict with parents (Gecas & Seff, 1990;
Steinberg, 1987), emotional volatility (Larson & Richards,
1994), negative affect (Brooks-Gunn & Warren, 1989;
Buchanan, Eccles, & Becker, 1992; Petersen et al., 1993),
and risk behavior (Arnett, 1992; Moffitt, 1993). Storm and
stress tends to be mentioned in these studies not as the
primary focus but in the course of addressing another topic.
Consistently, these studies reject the claimusually attributed to Hallthat adolescent storm and stress is universal
and find only weak support for the claim that it is biologically based. However, the studies also consistently support
a modified storm-and-stress thesis that adolescence is a
time when various types of problems are more likely to
arise than at other ages. The primary goal of this article is
to draw together the evidence from these areas and to
present an argument for the validity of the modified stormand-stress thesis.
Defining Storm and Stress
It is important at this point to address directly the question
of what is included under the concept of adolescent storm
and stress. Taking historical and theoretical views in combination with contemporary research, the core of the stormand-stress view seems to be the idea that adolescence is a
period of life that is difficult (Buchanan et al., 1990)more
difficult in some ways than other periods of life and difficult for adolescents as well as for the people around them.
This idea, that adolescence is difficult, includes three key
elements:
1. Conflict with parents. Adolescents have a tendency
to be rebellious and to resist adult authority. In particular,
adolescence is a time when conflict with parents is especially high.
2. Mood disruptions. Adolescents tend to be more
volatile emotionally than either children or adults. They
experience more extremes of mood and more swings of
mood from one extreme to the other. They also experience
more frequent episodes of depressed mood.
3. Risk behavior. Adolescents have higher rates of
reckless, norm-breaking, and antisocial behavior than either children or adults. Adolescents are more likely to
cause disruptions of the social order and to engage in
behavior that carries the potential for harm to themselves
and/or the people around them.
This is not an all-inclusive list of the possible elements
of adolescent storm and stress. Occasionally, storm and
stress has been discussed in terms of other elements such as
school difficulties (Eccles et al., 1993) and self-image
(Offer & Offer, 1975). However, the three elements discussed here appear consistently in the writings of Hall
(1904), the anthropologists (Mead, 1928), the psychoanalysts (Bios, 1962; Freud, 1968, 1969), and contemporary
scholars (e.g., Buchanan, 1998; Eccles et al., 1993; Offer &
Schonert-Reichl, 1992; Petersen et al., 1993; Steinberg &
Levine, 1997). Thus, these three elements are the focus of
this article.
May 1999 American Psychologist
Before proceeding, one more comment is in order
about the length of adolescence. Hall (1904, Vol. 1, p. xix)
viewed adolescence and its accompanying storm and stress
as lasting through the early twenties. Other observers of
adolescent storm and stress, from Aristotle to the present,
have applied their comments not just to early adolescence
but to a middle and late adolescence/emerging adulthood
extending through the late teens and early twenties (see
Kett, 1977). Here, I too consider the evidence related to the
storm-and-stress view for an extended adolescent age
range. Different elements of storm and stress have different
peaksconflict with parents in early adolescence (Paikoff
& Brooks-Gunn, 1991), mood disruptions in midadolescence (Petersen et al., 1993), and risk behavior in late
adolescence and emerging adulthood (Arnett, 1992, 1999).
Each of these elements represents a different kind of difficulty to be experienced, for adolescents as well as for
those around them. It is in combination that they create a
perception of adolescence as a difficult period of life.
I now consider each of the three elements of the
storm-and-stress view, in order of their developmental peak
during adolescence: conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risk behavior.
Conflict With Parents
Hall (1904) viewed adolescence as a time when "the wisdom and advice of parents and teachers is overtopped, and
in ruder natures may be met by blank contradiction" (Vol.
2, p. 79). He viewed this as due not only to human evolutionary history but also to the incompatibility between
adolescents' need for independence and the fact that "parents still think of their offspring as mere children, and
tighten the rein where they should loosen it" (Vol. 2, p.
384). Contemporary studies have established that conflict
with parents increases in early adolescence, compared with
preadolescence, and typically remains high for a couple of
years before declining in late adolescence (Laursen, Coy, &
Collins, 1998; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Smetana,
1989). A recent meta-analysis by Laursen et al. (1998)
concluded that within adolescence, conflict frequency is
highest in early adolescence and conflict intensity is highest
in midadolescence. One naturalistic study of early adolescents' conflicts with parents and siblings reported a rate of
2 conflicts every three days, or 20 per month (Montemayor
& Hanson, 1985). During the same time that the number of
daily conflicts between parents and their early adolescent
children increases (compared with preadolescence), declines occur in the amount of time they spend together and
in their reports of emotional closeness (Larson & Richards,
1994). Conflict is especially frequent and intense between
mothers and early adolescent daughters (Collins, 1990).
This conflict makes adolescence difficult not just for
adolescents but for their parents. Parents tend to perceive
adolescence as the most difficult stage of their children's
development (Buchanan et al., 1990; Pasley & Gecas,
1984; Small, Cornelius, & Eastman, 1983). However, it
should be added that there are substantial individual differences, and there are many parents and adolescents be319
tween whom there is little conflict, even if overall rates of
conflict between parents and children rise in adolescence.
Conflict between parents and adolescents is more likely
when the adolescent is experiencing depressed mood (Cole
& McPherson, 1993), when the adolescent is experiencing
other problems such as substance abuse (Petersen, 1988),
and when the adolescent is an early-maturing girl
(Buchanan et al., 1992).
Almost without exception, contemporary scholars emphasize that higher rates of conflict with parents in adolescence do not indicate a serious or enduring breach in
parent-adolescent relationships (e.g., Hill & Holmbeck,
1987; Montemayor, 1986; Offer & Offer, 1975; Rutter,
Graham, Chadwick, & Yule, 1976; Steinberg & Levine,
1997). Even amidst relatively high conflict, parents and
adolescents tend to report that overall their relationships are
good, that they share a wide range of core values, and that
they retain a considerable amount of mutual affection and
attachment. The conflicts tend to be over apparently mundane issues such as personal appearance, dating, curfews,
and the like (Smetana, 1988). Even if they disagree on
these issues, they tend to agree on more serious issues such
as the value of honesty and the importance of education.
This point seems well-established by research, but it
does not mean that adolescence is not a difficult time for
both adolescents and their parents as a result of their minor
but frequent conflicts. A useful connection could be made
here to the literature on stress. This literature provides
substantial evidence that it does not take cataclysmic events
such as loss of employment or the death of a loved one to
induce the experience of high stress. On the contrary, many
people experience a high degree of stress from an accumulation of minor irritations and aggravations, the "daily
hassles" of life (Kohn, Lafreniere, & Gurevich, 1991; Taylor, 1991). Thus, for parents and adolescents, it may be true
that their frequent conflicts tend to concern relatively mundane day-to-day issues. However, it may be that the "hassle" of these frequent conflicts is substantially responsible
for perceptions that adolescence is a difficult time.
Furthermore, the principal issues of conflict between
adolescents and their parents may not be as trivial as they
seem on the surface. Conflicts between adolescents and
their parents often concern issues such as when adolescents
should begin dating and whom they should date, where
they should be allowed go, and how late they should stay
out. All of these issues can serve as proxies for arguments
over more serious issues such as substance use, automobile
driving safety, and sex. By restricting when adolescents can
date and with whom, parents indirectly restrict adolescents'
sexual opportunities. By attempting to restrict where adolescents can go and how late they should stay out, parents
may be attempting to limit adolescents' access to alcohol
and drugs, to shield adolescents from the potentially dangerous combination of substance use and automobile driving, and to restrict adolescents' opportunities for sexual
exploration.
Sexual issues may be especially likely to be argued
about in this indirect way, through issues that seem mundane (and therefore safe for discussion) on the surface. No
320
clear mores currently exist in American society concerning
the sexual behavior of unmarried young people in their
teens (Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, & Kolata, 1994). Because of this lack of social consensus, parents of adolescents are left with many questions that admit no easy
answers. Few would agree that sexual intercourse is permissible for 13 year olds, but beyond this the questions
grow more complex. Is kissing OK for 13 year olds? When
do necking and petting become permissible? At what age
should dating be allowed, in light of the fact that it may
lead to kissing, necking, petting, and more? If intercourse is
not permissible for 13 year olds, what about for 16 or 17
year olds? For the most part, American parents prefer not to
discuss these issuesor any other sexual issuesdirectly
with their children (Jones et al., 1986). Yet even parents
who believe in giving their adolescents a substantial degree
of autonomy may not feel that they can simply leave sexual
decisions to their adolescents, particularly in a time when
AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are prevalent
(Eccles et al., 1993). The result is that parents and their
adolescents argue about seemingly trivial issues (such as
whether dating should be allowed as early as age 13 or
whether a 17 year old's curfew should be at midnight or at
1 a.m.) that may be proxies for arguments over complex
and sensitive sexual issues.
Some scholars (e.g., Steinberg, 1990) have suggested
that conflict between adolescents and their parents is actually beneficial to adolescents' development, because it promotes the development of individuation and autonomy
within the context of a warm relationship. This may be true,
but high conflict may make adolescence a difficult time for
adolescents and their parents even if the conflict ultimately
has benefits.
Mood Disruptions
The claim of a link between adolescence and extremes of
emotion (especially negative) is perhaps the most ancient
and enduring part of the storm-and-stress view. Hall (1904)
viewed adolescence as "the age of... rapid fluctuation of
moods" (Vol. 1, p. xv), with extremes of both elation and
depressed mood. What does contemporary research tell us
about whether adolescence is distinguished by high emotional volatility and a tendency toward negative moods? In
general, studies that have assessed mood at frequent intervals have found that adolescents do indeed report greater
extremes of mood and more frequent changes of mood,
compared with preadolescents or adults. Also, a number of
large longitudinal studies concur that negative affect increases in the transition from preadolescence to adolescence (see Buchanan et al., 1992, for a review).
One of the most interesting and enlightening lines of
research on this topic in recent years has involved studies
using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM; e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984; Larson & Ham, 1993; Larson & Richards, 1994). Also known as the "beeper method," this research entails having adolescents (and others)
carry beepers throughout the day and having them record
their thoughts, behavior, and emotions when they are
beeped at random times. This method has provided an
May 1999 American Psychologist
unprecedented look into the daily lives of adolescents,
including how their emotions vary in the course of a day
and how these variations compare with the emotions recorded by preadolescents and adults using the same
method.
The results of this research indicate that there is truth
to the storm-and-stress claim that adolescence is a time of
greater mood disruptions. Adolescents report experiencing
extremes of emotion (positive as well as negative, but
especially negative) more often than their parents do (Larson & Richards, 1994; also see Larson, Csikszentmihalyi,
& Graef, 1980). They report feeling "self-conscious" and
"embarrassed" two to three times more often than their
parents and are also more likely to feel awkward, lonely,
nervous, and ignored. Adolescents also report greater mood
disruptions when compared with preadolescents. Comparing preadolescent fifth graders with adolescent ninth graders, Larson and Richards (1994) described the emotional
"fall from grace" that occurs in that interval, as the proportion of time experienced as "very happy" declines by
50%, and similar declines take place in reports of feeling
"great," "proud," and "in control." The result is an overall
"deflation of childhood happiness" (p. 85) as childhood
ends and adolescence begins.
Larson and Richards (1994) saw this increase in mood
disruptions as due to cognitive and environmental factors
rather than pubertal changes. They noted that there is little
relationship in their data between pubertal stage and mood
disruptions. Rather, adolescents' newly developed capacities for abstract reasoning "allow them to see beneath the
surface of situations and envision hidden and more longlasting threats to their well-being" (p. 86). Larson and
Richards also argued that the experience of multiple life
changes and personal transitions during adolescence (such
as the onset of puberty, changing schools, and beginning to
date) contributes to adolescents' mood disruptions. However, Larson and Richards emphasized that it is not just that
adolescents experience potentially stressful events, but how
they experience and interpret them, that underlies their
mood disruptions. Even in response to the same or similar
events, adolescents report more extreme and negative
moods than preadolescents or adults.
In addition to the ESM studies, other studies have
found negative moods to be prevalent in adolescence, especially for girls. In their review of adolescent depression,
Petersen et al. (1993) described a "midadolescence peak"
(p. 157) that has been reported in studies of age differences
in depressed mood, indicating that adolescents have higher
rates of depressed mood than either children or adults.
Petersen et al. analyzed 14 studies of nonclinical samples
of adolescents and concluded that depressed mood ("above
which a score is thought to be predictive of clinical depression," p. 157) applied to over one third of adolescents at
any given time.
Adolescents vary in the degree to which they experience mood disruptions. A variety of factors have been
found to make mood disruptions in adolescence more
likely, including low popularity with peers, poor school
performance, and family problems such as marital discord
May 1999 American Psychologist
and parental divorce (Petersen et al., 1993). The more
negative life events adolescents experience, the more likely
they are to experience mood disruptions (Brooks-Gunn &
Warren, 1989). Although these individual differences
should be kept in mind, overall the results of research
indicate support for the storm-and-stress view that adolescence is more likely than other age periods to be a time of
emotional difficulty.
Risk Behavior
At the beginning of a scene in "The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare (1623/1995) has an older man deliver a soliloquy
about the youth of his day. "I would that there were no age
between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would
sleep out the rest," he grumbles, "for there is nothing in
between but getting wenches with child, wronging the
ancientry, stealing, fighting..." (Act III, Scene 3). This
lament should ring familiar to anyone living in Western
societies in recent centuries and to people in many other
societies as well. Adolescence has long been associated
with heightened rates of antisocial, norm-breaking, and
criminal behavior, particularly for boys. Hall (1904) included this as part of his view of adolescent storm and
stress, agreeing that "a period of semicriminality is normal
for all healthy [adolescent] boys" (Vol. 1, p. 404).
Contemporary research confirms that in the United
States and other Western countries, the teens and early
twenties are the years of highest prevalence of a variety of
types of risk behavior (i.e., behavior that carries the potential for harm to self and/or others). This pattern exists for
crime as well as for behavior such as substance use, risky
automobile driving, and risky sexual behavior (Arnett,
1992; Moffitt, 1993). Unlike conflict with parents or mood
disruptions, rates of risk behavior peak in late adolescence/
emerging adulthood rather than early or middle adolescence (Arnett, 1999). Rates of crime rise in the teens until
peaking at age 18, then drop steeply (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). Rates of most types of substance use peak at
about age 20 (Johnston, O'Malley, & Bachman, 1994).
Rates of automobile accidents and fatalities are highest in
the late teens (U.S. Department of Transportation, 1995).
Rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) peak in the
early twenties (Stein, Newcomb, & Bentler, 1994), and two
thirds of all STDs are contracted by people who are under
25 years old (Hatcher, Trussell, Stewart, & Stewart, 1994).
The variety of respects in which adolescents engage in
risk behavior at greater rates than children or adults lends
further validity to the perception of adolescence as a difficult time, a time of storm and stress. Although adolescents
generally experience their participation in risk behavior as
pleasurable (Arnett, 1992; Lyng, 1993), suffering the consequences of such behaviorcontact with the legal system, treatment for an STD, involvement in an automobile
accident, and so forthis likely to be experienced as
difficult. Furthermore, it is understandable that parents may
find it difficult to watch their children pass through the ages
when such behavior is most likely to occur.
In this area, as with conflict with parents and mood
disruptions, is it important to recognize individual differ321
ences. Adolescents vary a great deal in the extent to which
they participate in risk behavior. To some extent, these
differences are forecast by behavior prior to adolescence.
Persons who exhibit behavior problems in childhood are
especially likely to engage in risk behavior as adolescents
(Moffitt, 1993). Individual differences in characteristics
such as sensation seeking and impulsivity also contribute to
individual differences in risk behavior during adolescence
(Arnett, 1992; Zuckerman, 1983). Nevertheless, although
not all adolescents engage in risk behavior, the majority of
adolescents take part occasionally in risk behavior of one
kind or another (Arnett, 1992; Moffitt, 1993). This lends
substantial credence to the view that adolescence is a
period of storm and stress.
Why Storm and Stress?
Even if we accept the argument that adolescence is a time
of heightened tendency toward storm and stress, the question of why this should be so remains. To what extent do
the roots of storm and stress lie in the biological changes
that take place in the course of puberty? To what extent are
the roots cultural, with adolescent storm and stress being
especially pronounced in cultures that value individualism?
Current evidence indicates that biological changes
make some contribution. With respect to mood disruptions,
reviews of the effects of hormones on adolescents' moods
have concluded that the dramatic hormonal changes that
accompany puberty contribute to emotional volatility
(Buchanan et al., 1992) and negative moods (Brooks-Gunn,
Graber, & Paikoff, 1994), particularly in early adolescence
when the rate of hormonal change is steepest. However,
scholars in this area emphasize that the hormonal contribution to adolescent mood disruptions appears to be small
and tends to exist only in interaction with other factors
(Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994; Brooks-Gunn & Warren, 1989;
Susman, 1997).
More generally, with respect to mood disruptions as
well as with respect to conflict with parents and risk
behavior, too little is known about the role of biological
factors to make definitive statements at this point about
the role they may play in adolescent storm and stress.
Numerous possibilities exist concerning biological influences on storm and stress and the interaction between
biological and cultural factors. For example, recently a
phenomenon called delayed phase preference has been
identified (Carskadon, Vieria, & Acebo, 1993), which is
a tendency, based in the biological changes of puberty,
for adolescents to prefer staying up until relatively late
at night and sleeping until relatively late in the morning.
Does the cultural practice of requiring adolescents to get
up in the early morning to attend schooleven earlier
than young childrenresult for some adolescents in a
sleep-deprived state that may contribute to mood disruptions and more frequent conflict with parents? Other
possible biological contributors to adolescent storm and
stress include genes that may become active in adolescence and increase the likelihood of mood disruptions,
as well as biological bases for developmental changes in
characteristics such as emotional regulation (mood dis322
ruptions), aggressiveness (conflict with parents), and
sensation seeking (risk behavior).
Even with the limitations that exist in the knowledge of biological contributions to adolescent storm and
stress, it is clear that the biological changes of puberty
do not make adolescent storm and stress universal and
inevitable. This is easily and unmistakably demonstrated
by the fact that not all cultures experience the same
levels of adolescent storm and stress, and some evidently
do not experience it at all. Margaret Mead's (1928)
original assertion to this effect has more recently been
confirmed by Schlegel and Barry (1991), in their analysis of adolescence in 186 "traditional" (preindustrial)
cultures worldwide. They reported that most traditional
cultures experience less storm and stress among their
adolescents, compared with the West.
A key difference between traditional cultures and the
West, as Schlegel and Barry (1991) observed, is the degree
of independence allowed by adults and expected by adolescents. In the majority cultures of the West, because of
cultural values of individualism, it is taken for granted by
adolescents and their parents (as well as by most Western
social scientists) that children should become independent
from their parents during the course of adolescence and
should attain full independence by the end of adolescence.
A substantial amount of adolescent storm and stress arises
from regulating the pace of adolescents' growing independence (Steinberg, 1987). Differences of opinion over the
proper pace of this process are a source of conflict between
adolescents and their parents, and part of parents' perception of adolescence as difficult results from their concern
that adolescents' growing independence may lead to participation in risk behavior (Pasley & Gecas, 1984). In
contrast, independence for adolescents is less likely to be
expected by adolescents and their parents in traditional
cultures, so it is less likely to be a source of adolescent
storm and stress (Dasen, in press).
Even in traditional cultures, adolescent storm and
stress is not unknown. Biological changes in combination
with changing family obligations and changing economic
responsibilities are common to adolescence virtually everywhere and inherently involve new challenges andfor
some adolescents, at leastdifficulty (Dasen, in press).
Some ethnographies on adolescence describe conceptions
in traditional cultures of adolescence as a time of mood
disruptions (e.g., Davis & Davis, 1989; Kirkpatrick, 1987).
It should also be noted that differences exist among traditional cultures, with cultures that exclude adolescent boys
from the activities of men being more likely to have problems with their adolescent boys than cultures in which boys
take part daily in men's activities (Schlegel & Barry, 1991).
Nevertheless, adolescent storm and stress is generally more
common in the industrialized societies of the West than in
traditional cultures.
However, all over the world, traditional cultures are
becoming integrated into the global economy and are being
influenced by Western (especially American) cultures
through growing economic ties and through exposure to
Western movies, music, and television (Barber, 1995).
May 1999 American Psychologist
Within traditional cultures, adolescents are often the most
enthusiastic consumers of Western media (Barber, 1995;
Schlegel, in press), and evidence shows that adolescents
may embrace the individualism of the West more readily
than their parents do (Feldman, Mont-Reynaud, &
Rosenthal, 1992). A potentially rich topic for research in
the coming years would be to monitor changes in the
degree of adolescent storm and stress in traditional cultures
as globalization proceeds.
The limited evidence available so far indicates that
adolescents in traditional cultures often are able to maintain
their traditional values and practicesincluding low conflict with parents and low rates of risk behavioreven as
they become avid consumers of Western popular culture
(Feldman et al., 1992; Feldman, Rosenthal, Mont-Reynaud,
Leung, & Lau, 1991; Schlegel, in press). However, it
remains to be seen whether adolescents' adherence to traditional ways and their low levels of storm and stress will
be sustained as globalization increasingly changes the nature of their daily experience. For adolescents in traditional
cultures, the results of globalization include more time in
school, more time with peers, less time spent with their
parents and other adults, and more time for media-oriented
leisure (Schlegel, in press). All of these changes mean
greater independence for adolescents, greater emphasis on
their individual development, and less emphasis on their
obligations to others. If it is true that cultural values of
individualism lie at the heart of adolescent storm and stress,
then it seems likely that adolescence in traditional cultures
will become more stormy and stressful in the ways described here as the influence of the West increases (Dasen,
in press).
This does not mean that storm and stress is likely to
increase in all respects for all adolescents in traditional
cultures. Individual differences will undoubtedly exist, as
they do in the West. Indeed, increased individualism means
broadening the boundaries of socialization, so that a greater
range of individual differences is allowed expression (Arnett, 1995). Furthermore, the increased individualism fostered by globalization is likely to result in benefits for
adolescents, along with increased storm and stress. Cultural
changes toward globalization and individualism are likely
to mean that adolescents in traditional cultures will have a
greater range of educational and occupational opportunities
than previously and that these choices will be less constrained by gender and other factors (Dasen, in press;
Noble, Cover, & Yanagishita, 1996). However, the cost
may be greater adolescent storm and stress. It is even
possible that storm and stress will become more characteristic of adolescence in traditional cultures than in the West,
because adolescents in rapidly changing societies will be
confronted with multiple changes not only in their immediate lives but in their societies as well (Dasen, in press).
Similar issues exist within American society. Currently, there is evidence that adolescent storm and stress
may be more likely in the majority culturethe largely
White middle classthan in other cultures that are part of
American society. For example, parent-adolescent conflict
has been found to be more frequent in White middle-class
May 1999 American Psychologist
families than in Mexican American families (SuarezOrozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1996). In the same way that
values of individualism make adolescent storm and stress
more likely in the American majority culture compared
with non-Western traditional cultures, a similar difference
in values may make storm and stress more likely in the
American majority culture than in certain minority cultures
that are part of American society. And in the same way that
adolescence in traditional cultures may become more
stormy and stressful as the influence of the West increases,
adolescents in American minority cultures may exhibit
storm and stress to the extent that they adopt the individualistic values of the American majority culture.
Thus, it might be expected that adolescent storm and
stress will increase with the number of generations an
adolescent's family has been in the United States. Among
Asian American adolescents, for example, it has been
found that the greater the number of generations their
families have been in the United States, the more likely the
adolescents are to exhibit aspects of storm and stress
(Fletcher & Steinberg, 1994; Steinberg, 1996; also see
Rosenthal, 1984). However, as with the issues involving
traditional cultures, the direct exploration of storm-andstress issues involving adolescents in American minority
cultures has been minimal thus far and represents a promising area for further investigation.
Scholars and Stereotypes
When adolescent storm and stress is discussed by contemporary scholars on adolescence, it is generally in the context of the scholars expressing concern over the "stereotype" or "myth" of adolescent storm and stress that is
perceived to exist among parents, teachers, and the general
public (Buchanan et al., 1990; Holmbeck & Hill, 1988;
Offer & Schonert-Reichl, 1992; Petersen et al., 1993;
Steinberg & Levine, 1997). Scholars contrast these popular
perceptions of adolescence as a difficult time with their
own research findings that adolescence is not difficult for
all adolescents in all respects and that the biological
changes of puberty are not strongly related to any storm
and stress that does exist in adolescence.
One of the implications of the argument presented
here is that the findings of the scholars and the conception
of adolescence held by nonscholars in American society
may not be so far apart after all. With respect to conflict
with parents, mood disruptions, and risk behavior, the
results of scholars' research indicate that adolescence is
stormy and stressful for many American adolescents and
for the people around them. It is true that this research also
indicates that there are substantial individual differences in
these difficulties and that storm and stress is by no means
universal and inevitable. However, there is no indication
that most people in the American public see storm and
stress as universal and inevitable. On the contrary, the
studies that have investigated perceptions of storm and
stress inquire about people's perceptions of adolescents in
general. People's responses endorsing storm-and-stress
statements indicate simply that they see storm and stress
as characteristic of adolescents taken as a group, not that
323
it is characteristic of all adolescents without exception
(Buchanan, 1998; Buchanan et al., 1990; Buchanan &
Holmbeck, 1998; Holmbeck & Hill, 1988).
People tend to see adolescence as a time of life that is
more likely than other times of life to involve difficulties
such as conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risk
behavior, and scholars' research supports this modified
storm-and-stress view of adolescence rather than contradicting it. Contemporary scholars disagree not so much
with the American public or even with G. Stanley Hall
(1904), but mainly with the psychoanalytic theorists of the
past, particularly Anna Freud (1946, 1958, 1968, 1969),
who can truly be said to have claimed that adolescent storm
and stress is universal and inevitable. The one storm-andstress issue on which scholars and the general public seem
genuinely to disagree is the meaning and significance of
parent-adolescent conflict, which scholars concede is common but tend to deprecate as being over trivial and mundane issues. However, as I have argued, there may be more
merit to the popular view on this topic than scholars have
acknowledged.
One reason for scholars' concern over public beliefs
about adolescent storm and stress is that they fear such
beliefs could have negative consequences. Some scholars
speculate that storm-and-stress beliefs may lead parents to
adopt authoritarian parenting techniques as a way of
thwarting the storm and stress they anticipate in their
adolescents (Holmbeck, 1996). Others fear that if storm
and stress is regarded as normative, adolescents with serious problems will not get the attention and help they need
because their problems will be dismissed as normal for
adolescence (Offer & Schonert-Reichl, 1992; Petersen et
al., 1993). These concerns are legitimate and are welltaken. However, there are also concerns that arise from
underrating the likelihood of storm and stress, and benefits
that can result from expecting adolescence to be a time of
storm and stress. Although it is true that if adolescence is
expected to be a time of "turmoil" there may be adolescents
whose problems go unrecognized and untreated, it is also
true that if adolescence is expected to be no more difficult
than childhood, then adolescents who are experiencing
normal difficulties may be seen as pathological and in need
of treatment.
Also, expecting adolescence to be difficult could have
positive effects. Anticipating adolescent storm and stress
may inspire parents and teachers to think ahead about how
to approach potential problems of adolescence if they arise.
Furthermore, parents, teachers, adolescents, and others who
expect adolescence to be difficult may be pleasantly surprised when a particular adolescent shows few or no difficulties, as will be the case for many adolescents because
there are considerable individual differences in the storm
and stress they experience (Buchanan, 1998).
Conclusion
Adolescent storm and stress is not simply a myth that has
captured the popular imagination but a real part of life for
many adolescents and their parents in contemporary American society. Although the extreme portrayal of adolescent
324
storm and stress by certain psychoanalytic theorists (Freud,
1958, 1968 1969) is a caricature of normal adolescent
development, there is support for Hall's (1904) view that a
tendency toward some aspects of storm and stress exists in
adolescence. In their conflicts with parents, in their mood
disruptions, and in their higher rates of a variety of types of
risk behavior, many adolescents exhibit a heightened degree of storm and stress compared with other periods of
life. Their parents, too, often experience difficultyfrom
increased conflict when their children are in early adolescence, from mood disruptions during midadolescence, and
from anxiety over the increased possibility of risk behavior
when their children are in late adolescence. However,
storm and stress in adolescence is not something written
indelibly into the human life course. On the contrary, there
are cultural differences in storm and stress, and within
cultures there are individual differences in the extent to
which adolescents exhibit the different aspects of it.
Finally, to view adolescence as a time of storm and
stress is not to say that adolescence is characterized only by
storm and stress. Even amidst the storm and stress of
adolescence, most adolescents take pleasure in many aspects of their lives, are satisfied with most of their relationships most of the time, and are hopeful about the future
(Offer & Schonert-Reichl, 1992). G. S. Hall (1904) saw
adolescence as stormy and stressful, but also as "the birthday of the imagination" (Vol. 1, p. 313) and "the best
decade of life" (Vol. 1, p. xviii), when "the life of feeling
has its prime" (Vol. 1, p. 59). The paradox of adolescence
is that it can be at once a time of storm and stress and a time
of exuberant growth.
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