About

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scholar in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has also taught at the University of Missouri. During 2005 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr. Arnett earned a B.S. in psychology from Michigan State University in 1980, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Virginia in 1985 and 1986.

He was the Founding President and first Executive Director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA) and he is the author of the book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties, published by Oxford University Press in 2004. The 2nd edition was published in 2015 and the 3rd edition in 2024. He is also co-author (with Lene Jensen) of four textbooks, including the most widely used textbook on adolescence, Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach (2023, Pearson Education, 7th edition). In addition to emerging adulthood, his other scholarly interests include promoting a more culturally-inclusive psychology; adolescents’ risk behavior; media use in adolescence; and adolescents’ responses to cigarette advertising.

Arnett has two children, twins Miles and Paris, born in 1999. His wife, Lene Jensen, is also a professor at Clark. He has appeared on television and frequently in print media, including a cover story in the New York Times Sunday magazine in August, 2010.