adolescence
Definition
Adolescence is a developmentally distinct period marked by heightened malleability in political identities, ideological commitments, and behavioral orientations, making it especially sensitive to contextual influences such as political alienation and institutional distrust. It is also characterized by increased impulsive and sensation-seeking behavior, alongside a concurrent expansion of social-affective and social-cognitive maturation, with risk-taking serving an adaptive function in promoting independence and personal growth. Longitudinal evidence from 574 Quebec high school students shows that adolescents move significantly across ideological profiles and their support for the glorification of violence within a single year, suggesting that exploration of activism and violence as idioms of protest is both common and dynamic during this period. Late adolescence and young adulthood are further recognized as formative periods for political identity development, during which young people are more responsive to sociopolitical events, including conditions of crisis that may shape attitudes toward democratic and authoritarian principles.
Sources: Miklikowska & Besta (2026), Tsomokos & Flouri (2023), Rousseau & Veissière (2026), Borghi et al. (2025)
Related Terms
- radical political behavior (1 shared article)
- Ideological hybridization (1 shared article)
- Nihilistic violence (1 shared article)
- Development trajectories (1 shared article)
- violent extremism (1 shared article)
- political dissatisfaction (1 shared article)
- political powerlessness (1 shared article)
- political alienation (1 shared article)
- radicalization (1 shared article)
- radicalism (1 shared article)
- theory of mind (1 shared article)
- political trust (1 shared article)
- ideology (1 shared article)
- political attitudes (1 shared article)
- future anxiety (1 shared article)
- emotion regulation (1 shared article)
- decision-making (1 shared article)
- risk-taking (1 shared article)
- social cognition (1 shared article)
Applications
Adolescence and Political Radicalism
Political radicalism is disproportionately concentrated among youth, with onset occurring at increasingly younger ages, and gendered pathways into radicalization appear to begin during adolescence. A five-wave panel study of Swedish adolescents aged 13 to 17 found that within-person increases in political distrust, powerlessness, and dissatisfaction were associated with concurrent increases in radical political behaviors, with effects more pronounced among boys than girls.
Sources: Miklikowska & Besta (2026)
Adolescence and Future Anxiety
Future anxiety, characterized by pessimism and uncertainty about what lies ahead, is associated with political attitudes in adolescence and young adulthood, a period recognized as formative for political identity development. In a cross-sectional sample of 988 UK adolescents aged 16 to 21, future anxiety was most strongly associated with support for democratic principles, though among young men it was also associated with right-conservative ideological self-classification, a pattern replicated in Greek adolescents.
Sources: Borghi et al. (2025)
Adolescence and Social Cognition
Social cognitive abilities developed in childhood carry forward measurable consequences for decision-making in adolescence, consistent with the Social-Motivational Flexibility Model, which holds that adolescent cognitive style affords adaptive advantages in social-affective processing and the flexible adjustment of goals in changing social environments. In a sample of 9,575 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, superior social cognition at ages 5 and 7 was positively associated with risk adjustment on the Cambridge Gambling Task at age 14, even after controlling for sex, family income, parental education, and verbal ability.
Sources: Tsomokos & Flouri (2023)
