Associate Area Editor's Note

Articles on "Identity and Emerging Adulthood" can include any identity-related topic that pertains to people in the 18-29 age period. I prefer the term emerging adulthood to "youth," "young adulthood," or "the transition to adulthood" because emerging adulthood is a term that has been more clearly defined in its developmental meaning. Emerging adulthood has been conceptualized as a period marked by exploration and instability, and these characteristics certainly pertain to identity issues. The explorations of emerging adulthood are often identity-related, in that they tend to concern love, work, or ideology. The instability of emerging adulthood is a reflection of the changes young people make in the course of their identity explorations. Although identity has traditionally been regarded as a topic that especially pertains to adolescence, today in industrialized societies identity explorations tend to continue into emerging adulthood and in fact become more systematic and serious than in adolescence. Articles submitted to Identity that concern the emerging adulthood period should have a developmental context, not necessarily in line with previous ideas about emerging adulthood but reflecting a consideration of how the developmental characteristics of emerging adulthood may be similar to or different from adolescence or (later) adulthood. For more information about emerging adulthood, see Arnett (2000) in American Psychologist and the web site <http://www.s-r-a.org/easig.html>.