Other Scholarly Activities

Next to his work on emerging adulthood, Dr. Arnett’s most influential area of scholarship has been his critique of psychology for its overwhelming focus on Americans and his encouragement of a broader cultural range for psychological theory and research. His 2008 article The Neglected 95: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American has been cited nearly 10,000 times. A 10-year follow up led by Amber Thalmayer that Dr. Arnett co-authored was published in 2021. Both articles were published in American Psychologist, one of the most prominent journals in the field of psychology.

Dr. Arnett’s early work involved theory and research on risk behavior in adolescence. He proposed a cultural theory that included personality traits of sensation seeking and aggressiveness as well as environmental influences from family relationships to media use. His scale of sensation seeking has been widely used in research for over 30 years. His article Getting Better All the Time: Trends in Adolescent Risk Behavior Since 1990 won the 2021 George A.Miller Award from the Society for General Psychology for the best article in general psychology.

Another area of Dr. Arnett’s early research involved adolescents’ media use. He wrote an influential theoretical article on this topic. His first book in 1994 summarized his research on heavy metal fans and the meaning of the music in their lives.

For nearly 30 years Dr. Arnett has been involved in litigation against the major tobacco companies for their targeting of minors in their cigarette advertisements. As part of this work he conducted several studies of adolescents’ responses to cigarette ads. He has testified in many cases, including the multi-state class action suit that resulted in 1998 in the largest legal settlement in history and included sharp restrictions in cigarette advertising. Since that time tobacco advertising has virtually disappeared from American lives and rates of adolescent smoking have declined to almost nothing.