Principal Investigator A Rae Goodell Simpson
Co-investigator William M Kettyle
Project Website http://hrweb.mit.edu/worklife/youngadult/
Project Start Date July 2006
The years from 18 to 25 are a time of stunning accomplishments and chilling risks, as a roller coaster of internal and external changes, including brain changes, propels young adults from adolescence toward full maturity. Yet we are only beginning to understand how and why this all happens -- and sometimes doesn't.
The MIT Young Adult Development Project was created to capture the powerful new research findings that are emerging about young adulthood and to make these insights more accessible to those who need them, including colleges and universities, employers, parents, human service providers, and young adults themselves.
Simpson launched the MIT Young Adult Development Project in July 2006, with grant money from the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts and additional funding from the Office for the Dean of Undergraduate Education.
Work was originally sparked by concerns within MIT and nationwide about incidences of harmful and risky behavior on campuses, including suicides. While 21-year-olds are legally adults, their capacity for complex thinking in times of high emotion--what researchers call "hot" cognition as distinguished from "cold" cognition when calm--is still being developed, Simpson found. Problems such as mental illness often emerge often emerge in the mid-20s, possible additional evidence of changes in the brain in those years.
A growing body of research knowledge is seeking to understand the unique strengths and vulnerabilities of young adulthood, including:
(*) impressive achievement in education, innovation, community service, and social entrepreneurship;(*) rapidly changing social patterns around relationships with parents; sexual practices; employment preferences; and marriage, family formation, and childrearing; and(*) alarming rates of mental illness, suicide, binge drinking, school problems, and other risks.
Responding to increasing awareness and concerns, the MIT Young Adult Development Project was created to analyze, distill, and disseminate key findings about young adult development, findings that shed light on the unique strengths and dramatic challenges for this extraordinary period.