Introduction: The Feedback Your Teenage Brain Wants

Part 1: From 10 to 25 Years Old: What's Different About the Young Generation?

Chapter 1: What Adults Get Wrong
Chapter 2: Mentor Mindset: The Conditions of Adults They Desire
Chapter 3: Why Are Kids These Days So Hard to Approach?
Chapter 4: How Influential Adults Treat Youth

Part 2: What Motivates Young People

Chapter 5: Transparency: Good Feedback Reveals Intention
Chapter 6 Question: No Instructions
Chapter 7: Stress: How to Make It a Resource
Chapter 8: Purpose: More Important Than Interest
Chapter 9: Belonging: A Metric for Gauging the Potential for Change

Part 3: How does influence persist?

Confidence that all 10 chapters are excellent enough
Chapter 11: Stories of Influential Adults
Chapter 12: Creating a Narrative for Growth

Going out
Appendix: Putting It into Practice

Acknowledgements
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“What makes feedback from a wise adult different?”
Based on the latest research and experiments in neuroscience and psychology
Breaking down misconceptions and common sense about the adolescent brain
A surprising discovery in motivational psychology that drives the desire to learn, grow, and contribute.

A new educational book has been published, offering practical, scientifically-based advice to adults who want to interact effectively with young people, from adolescence to early adulthood.
David Yeager, a renowned psychologist who studies the social development and motivation of adolescents, directly refutes the "neurobiological incompetence model" in this book, "Adult Influence," which argues that adolescents have difficulty making rational judgments and acting because their brains are immature.
As neuroscientists have recently discovered, it's not fun, curiosity, or threats that drive behavioral change in adolescents.
It is ‘status’ and ‘respect’.
As puberty begins around age 10, the human brain develops a craving for social rewards like pride, praise, and respect, and an extreme aversion to social pain like humiliation and shame.
Surprisingly, this phenomenon continues into the mid-20s, when adults begin to build stable careers.

David Yeager offers a "mentor mindset" for those who want to understand the neurobiological needs of adolescents, motivate them, and influence them wisely.
A mentor mindset is a way of holding younger generations to high standards while also actively providing them with the support they need to meet those high standards.
This book presents a wealth of real-world examples of how individuals with a mentoring mindset have influenced the lives of young people and brought about real change.
An NBA coach who improved the shooting percentage of a proud but mistake-prone star player, a high school teacher who ensured over 90% of his students passed college-level physics exams every year, and a legendary manager who transformed Microsoft from a hellish workplace into the best place to work in the world.
Instead of pampering their teens, they hold them to high standards, don't ignore them, ask questions rather than direct them, and are transparent about their goals to prevent misunderstandings.
This entire process conveys the message to young people that they are 'recognized as social beings who do their part.'

Jaeger, who has experimentally proven that a mentor mindset reduces behavioral problems in adolescents, such as lack of motivation to learn, unhealthy eating habits, and school violence, presents effective and easy-to-learn practices to help anyone learn and utilize the mentor mindset.
This book seamlessly combines expert knowledge, scientific research, and real-world examples on youth development, making it the ultimate guide for those who believe in the potential of the younger generation, envision positive change, and strive to grow into good adults.

Adolescence is getting longer: What the brains of fourth-graders and new college graduates have in common
: What the Brain Wants Between Ages 10 and 25

Around the age of 10, puberty begins.
During puberty, a chain of changes begins to occur in the hormones, brain, body, and social life, all of which are aimed at growing into an adult who can contribute to the survival of the group.
Neuroscientists say this chain of changes continues into our mid-20s, and that the brain's wiring is still influenced by our environment until then.
This does not mean that the brain of a 20-year-old is immature, but rather that it is in a continuous adaptive phase.
The reason is that doing so is advantageous to one's survival.
This phenomenon becomes more understandable when we consider that in modern society, due to the longer adolescence, people are starting to build stable careers later in life.
This also means that the brains and motivational mechanisms of young people between the ages of 10 and 25 have much more in common than commonly believed.

So what are the most influential factors on adolescents during this period? They are "status" and "respect."
Neuroscientists have discovered that as we go through puberty, our brains become more sensitive to social status and respect.
During this period, the brain craves experiences like pride, admiration, and respect, and abhors socially painful experiences like humiliation or shame.
From the onset of puberty until they assume adult roles in society, humans develop a desire to experience more profound and meaningful respect.
For this reason, adolescents are very sensitive to whether they are respected or ignored when interacting with those who have influence over them, such as parents, teachers, administrators, and coaches.
Based on this scientific research, David Yeager, along with fellow psychologists Ron Dahl and Carol Dweck, proposed the 'status and esteem hypothesis'.
The status and esteem hypothesis argues that just as the core needs of infancy are fulfilled by eating and sleeping well, the core needs of adolescence are status and esteem, and that fulfilling these needs can lead to more desirable motivation and behavior.

Why do adults' words become less effective when puberty begins?
Scientists Warn Against Neurobiological Models of Incompetence

In 1998, a meeting was held in Florida, USA, to select an advertising agency to handle a multi-million dollar youth smoking prevention campaign.
A group of government epidemiologists has urged advertising agencies to adhere to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "approved strategy" to discourage teen smoking.
The strategy was to send the message to teenagers that 1) smoking causes cancer, 2) it stains your teeth, and 3) it is unsexy.

Alex Bogusky, a young advertising executive at the time, thought this approach was doomed to fail.
The teenagers Bogerski's team met could fluently explain how smoking causes cancer while holding a cigarette, didn't care about their teeth being stained, and thought smoking was cool and sexy.
In other words, the government's approval strategy was never the information teenagers wanted.
Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came up with this strategy because they thought teenagers were stupid.
This is the perspective of the 'neurobiological incompetence model'.
The neurobiological incompetence model explains that adolescents are defective and lack the ability to accurately assess the future consequences of their actions.
Therefore, it is believed that teenagers should learn from wise adults what to think and how to do it.


Bogerski, on the other hand, thought teenagers were smart.
He believed that the reason teenagers smoke was because tobacco companies presented smoking as a solution to meet their needs.
The need was to 'declare oneself an adult'.
Bogerski had a keen insight into the teenagers' desire for status and respect, and created the "Truth" campaign, featuring the image of "teenagers taking action against the injustices of greedy and selfish tobacco companies."
As a result, the smoking rate among teenagers fell from 28% to less than 6%.
The campaign, created by Bogersky, remains one of the most successful public health campaigns in American history.
This "truth" campaign case study highlights how the neurobiological model of incompetence can hinder healthy communication with younger generations, leading to devastating consequences.
This book explains how today's neurobiological model of incompetence came to be, how interpretations of adolescent brain research have led to misunderstandings, and introduces several studies that overturn this model of incompetence and prompt a rethinking of adolescence.


Mentor Mindset: What Young People Want from a Wise Adult

In this book, David Yeager divides the types of adults who deal with teenagers into three types.
The enforcer, the protector, and the mentor are those.
The enforcer mindset believes that immature and rebellious youth will cause serious harm to society and that youth need responsibility, discipline, and standards.
I think that's something you have to put up with if you want to become an outstanding talent.
But while they impose high standards, they don't provide support that matches them.
The mindset of a pusher who only enforces standards can lead to the abuse or abandonment of youth.

The parental mindset believes that it is cruel to impose standards on teenagers that seem difficult to achieve.
They believe that it is wrong to expect too much from teenagers because they are immature, or that if you care about teenagers, you should do whatever it takes for them.
While these approaches are often thoughtful, they fail to encourage adolescents to grow.
Moreover, because this stems from the belief that adolescents are incompetent, it is easy for adolescents to feel that they are being ignored.
Both the coercer mindset and the guardian mindset judge youth based on the “neurobiological incompetence model.”
The mentor mindset takes a perspective that moves beyond the incompetence model.
Apply high standards and high support at the same time.
Take teenagers seriously and do not treat them like children or ignore them.
Also, listen to the constraints (plights) that young people face, and do not act as if they are weak or irrational.
To fulfill young people's desire for social status and respect, we actively provide them with the resources they need to build a reputation for competence.


In this book, David Yeager proves through numerous experiments and studies that the mentor mindset is very effective in improving youth behavioral problems, such as stimulating learning motivation and reducing bad eating habits and school violence.
And it introduces people with a mentor mindset and describes in detail and dramatically how they have influenced the lives of young people.
At the end of the book, an appendix provides effective and easy-to-learn practices to help anyone learn and utilize the mentor mindset.
While this book offers ways to motivate and positively guide youth ages 10 to 25, it ultimately conveys the message that adults must change first to become better leaders, parents, managers, and teachers.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to be a wise adult who has a positive influence on young people.