Life tasks, self-concept ideals, and cognitive strategies in a life transition.

Nancy Cantor, Julie K. Norem, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Christopher A. Langston Institute for Social Research University of Michigan Aaron M. Brower School of Social Work University of Wisconsin This paper reports on data from a longitudinal study in which normative life tasks and individuals' personal versions of those tasks are investigated in the context of students making the transition from home and high school to college life. Analyses focus both on common patterns of life-task appraisal in interpersonal and achievement domains and on differences in the self-concepts and cognitive strategies that individual students bring to bear as they confront these normative pressures (Cantor Mis- chel, 1979). However, this approach also has a clear disadvan- tage: There are potentially hundreds of dimensions that individ- uals may use to assess situations; countless memories, triggered by obscure cues, may influence interpretations; and innumera- ble prior experiences may contaminate construal. For theo- rists within a cognitive perspective, the particular problem of selecting units for study thus becomes that of circumscribing the number of dimensions that individuals are apt to use when constructing their interpretations in a particular context, while selecting situations that are relevant enough to tap knowledge and beliefs that appropriately capture individual variation. Life Tasks in a Life Transition The way we have chosen to address this issue is to choose a particular life transition--in this case, the transition from home and high school to college life--within which to study the ways in which individuals are able to cope with situations that important to them (Stewart & Healy, 1985). Our assumption