Every parent dreams of their child growing up to lead a fulfilling, joyful life. During the teenage years, this aspiration often translates into a strong emphasis on grades, test scores, and the likelihood of college acceptance.
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After all, economic security and a stable income are seen as crucial components of happiness. But what if, instead of focusing solely on academic achievements, it's the type of thinking a young person engages in—both in and out of school—that truly shapes their path to a happy adulthood?
How can certain types of thinking support the development of teenagers' brains?
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor at the University of Southern California, is part of a research group studying how adolescents' thinking affects their brain development, with some unexpected findings.
In a five-year study involving 65 participants aged 14-18, all young people of color living in an urban area, researchers conducted one-on-one interviews. They showed the teens "compelling mini-documentary stories about teenagers from around the world" and asked, "How does this person's story make you feel?"
"They could kind of say anything they wanted," Immordino-Yang explained.
Given the engaging material, it's not surprising that the teens in the study connected the stories to their own lives and broader social and moral issues. The researchers refer to this as "transcendent thinking."
"Transcendent thinking really is meant to capture that propensity to move beyond the current context, build a bigger story and grapple with the psychological kind of meaning or implications that transcend the here and now," Immordino-Yang said.
Although we often link such thoughtfulness to academically high-achieving children, the researchers observed varying degrees of transcendent thinking in all the teens in the study.
"All the kids started to think about these bigger issues spontaneously and to ask us about them, or to try to connect it to their own story or life or bigger ideas, values, or beliefs that they hold," said Immordino-Yang, noting that "some kids did it far more than others."
Interestingly, the quantity of transcendent thinking expressed by teens was not correlated with their IQ or markers of socioeconomic status, such as income, ethnic background, or parents' level of education. (For comparison, SAT scores are highly correlated with all of the above.)
Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the relationship between transcendent thinking, brain activity, and brain development over time. They examined images of the teens' brains taken both at rest and while thinking about the stories, measuring the connectivity between two major neural networks activated during this kind of thinking.
Two years later, the teens returned for another round of brain scans. The researchers found that those who had exhibited more transcendent thinking initially showed greater brain development over time. This was independent of IQ and socioeconomic status. The more transcendent thinking a teen displayed initially, the greater their measured brain growth.
In follow-up surveys over the next three years as the teens transitioned into adulthood, researchers discovered that the extent of brain development had a significant impact on their overall lives.
How does transcendent thinking relate to leading a fulfilling life?
In follow-up surveys, the young adults were asked about their identity development and life satisfaction, including how much they liked themselves and their feelings about their relationships with others. The researchers discovered that teens whose brains exhibited more growth—both in terms of transcendent thinking and overall brain development over time—scored higher on these measures of well-being.
"What we found is that the degree of brain growth—specifically, not just the original thinking in the interview, but actually the work of growing your brain—is associated with growing who you are," Immordino-Yang explained. "This identity development, in turn, predicted how satisfied young adults were with their lives and how much they liked themselves a year and a half or two years later."
The study suggests a "developmental cascade" effect in which transcendent thinking leads to brain growth, which subsequently contributes to life satisfaction.
Immordino-Yang stressed the importance of each step in this process. "You couldn't jump straight from the thinking in the interview to the young adult outcomes," she noted. "You have to go through the process of growing yourself."
What does this mean for how we should raise and educate teenagers?
Immordino-Yang believes that these findings offer positive implications for teenagers, parents, and educators. They support the concept of a growth mindset, which suggests that intelligence is not a fixed trait but can be developed over time. Teenagers' brains undergo changes as they mature, and we can influence this neurodevelopment by providing them with ample opportunities to engage in transcendent thinking.
Rather than solely focusing on outcomes such as test scores or grades, educators could emphasize the processes through which students learn, maximizing experiences that support brain growth.
"I think we really need to pay close attention to not just what teenagers know and what they are capable of, but also how they acquire that knowledge," Immordino-Yang said.
She emphasized that teenagers' curiosity and their ability to reconsider issues and consider multiple perspectives "appear to be significant factors in teenagers' development in terms of their well-being, productivity, and successful transition to adulthood."
Unfortunately, the current educational system often rewards compliance without questioning authority, rather than encouraging students to challenge and inquire deeply.
"Our standard educational structures and traditional approaches to engaging adolescents in middle and high school often do not support these mental dispositions, and, in many cases, they actually penalize them," Immordino-Yang noted. Instead, she believes that we should encourage children to think deeply and critically and to inquire, "Why?"
Lisa Miller, a professor at Columbia University Teacher's College and author of "The Spiritual Child: New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving," is not affiliated with the study but finds the potential of transcendent thinking aligns with her own research on the importance of teenagers finding deeper meaning in their lives.
"There are multiple ways of understanding," Miller explained. While schooling tends to prioritize "logic and empiricism," she believes that this alone is insufficient. "Narrow, strategic, and tactical thinking alone is insufficient. There needs to be a fresh, innovative, bottom-up creative way of thinking."
To cultivate their happiness and counter what Miller describes as the "diseases of despair" that have become prevalent in Generation Z, young people need to connect with something larger than themselves. Whether they define it as intuition, spiritual awareness, or a mystical connection, research indicates that spirituality can help prevent depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts.
Miller also emphasized the impact of parents sharing their own experiences with higher powers or struggles, leading to breakthroughs that transcend individual challenges.
Just as the researchers in the study used real stories to stimulate transcendent thinking, parents can share their own stories to demonstrate various ways of finding meaning for their children.
Immordino-Yang stated that the research provides "scientific evidence that these alternative educational approaches may actually develop the brain in ways that are crucial for healthy young adulthood."
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