ABSTRACT We introduce this special issue on Political Engagement in Childhood and Adolescence by reviewing the main contributions of each paper and drawing out their key themes. Four themes emerged across the papers. First, young people are interested in politics from an early age. Second, their social environments support them in understanding and engaging with politics. Third, young people are growing up in politically polarized contexts, but intergroup contact can foster nuanced understandings. Finally, political engagement is embedded within an emotional context. We conclude by identifying key directions for future research.
ABSTRACT Parental psychological control is consistently linked to negative adolescent adjustment across cultures. Yet psychological control also varies normatively alongside developmental transitions in adolescence. This study examines trajectories of mother‐ and father‐reported psychological control from early to middle adolescence across 12 cultural contexts and tests whether levels and rates of change relate to adolescent pubertal status and cultural emphases on family obligations. Participants were mothers and fathers of 1338 adolescents from the Parenting Across Cultures project: Shanghai, China ( n = 123); Medellín, Colombia ( n = 108); Naples, Italy ( n = 102); Rome, Italy ( n = 111); Zarqa, Jordan ( n = 114); Kisumu, Kenya ( n = 100); Manila, Philippines ( n = 120); Trollhättan/Vänersborg, Sweden ( n = 129); Chiang Mai, Thailand ( n = 120); and Durham, North Carolina, United States ( n = 102 African American, n = 99 Latin American, n = 110 European American). Data from five waves (ages 12–16) were analyzed. In most sites, both mothers and fathers reported linear declines in psychological control across adolescence; however, in some sites, trajectories remained stable. Pubertal status at age 12 predicted only the level of father‐reported psychological control in two sites. By contrast, fathers’ valuing of family obligation predicted slopes across all sites: When family obligation was highly valued, the rate of decrease in psychological control was lower. Findings indicate both variation and common patterns in changes in parental psychological control across early to mid‐adolescence in diverse cultural contexts.
ABSTRACT Friendship becomes increasingly crucial during adolescence. Prior studies examining the relations between adolescents’ academic achievements and self‐esteem have typically treated adolescents as isolated units. The current study considered adolescents’ embeddedness within crucial friendships, investigated the relation between best friends’ academic achievements and adolescents’ self‐esteem within dyadic friendship frameworks, and examined the mediating role of peer acceptance. Participants were 157 same‐gender best friend dyads (59.87% girls; M age = 11.83 years) in Shanghai, China. Assessments of academic achievements, peer acceptance, and self‐esteem were obtained from multiple sources, including teacher ratings, peer nominations, and self‐reports, respectively. Results from the Actor‐Partner Interdependence Analysis revealed that the academic achievements of both adolescents and their best friends positively predicted adolescents’ self‐esteem. For adolescents’ own academic achievements, the positive association with their self‐esteem was predominantly direct, when compared to the smaller indirect effect via peer acceptance. Whereas for best friends’ academic achievements, their positive association with adolescents’ self‐esteem was predominantly indirect, mediated by best friends’ higher peer acceptance. The current study revealed a positive spillover effect of best friends’ academic achievements on adolescents’ self‐esteem, an effect that was specifically associated with best friends’ peer acceptance rather than adolescents’ own peer acceptance. These findings highlight the importance of best friends in promoting Chinese adolescents’ psychological adjustment.
ABSTRACT Extreme levels of preschool sadness hallmark emotion regulation difficulties and early depression risk. Emotion socialization theory proposes that parents’ punitive or minimizing reactions can heighten children's sadness. Yet children's constitutionally‐based emotional reactivity may amplify or buffer such forms of parental socialization. We tested whether children's emotional reactivity, indexed at the neural level using the Late Positive Potential (LPP), moderated longitudinal associations between punitive/minimizing reactions and children's sadness. Participants were 121 preschoolers (59% girls) and their parents. At child age 3, mothers and fathers reported on their own punitive and minimizing reactions to children's negative emotions, providing separate indices of maternal and paternal behaviors. At age 4, children completed a passive viewing task to assess neural responses to positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. At age 5, children's sadness was indexed via parent report. Results revealed that children's neural reactivity to positive stimuli moderated the link between paternal, but not maternal, punitive/minimizing reactions and children's sadness. Paternal punitive/minimizing reactions predicted higher sadness at lower levels of child positive reactivity but lower sadness at higher levels of reactivity. This study highlights heterogeneity in children's responses to parental socialization and suggest that neural indices of emotional reactivity may help explain differential vulnerability. Findings also underscore a unique paternal role in early emotional adjustment.
ABSTRACT This research examined whether children are sensitive to the level of generosity demonstrated by peer prosocial models and whether such modeling has a lasting effect on promoting children's sharing. Four‐ and 6‐year‐old Chinese children ( N = 120) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the high generosity condition, children watched a video in which four peers each sequentially shared 8 out of 10 tokens with anonymous recipients. In the moderate generosity condition, four peers each shared 4 out of 10 tokens. Children then themselves participated in a sharing task. The results showed that 6‐year‐olds, but not 4‐year‐olds, shared significantly more in the high generosity condition than in the moderate generosity condition. About two weeks later, children engaged in a second sharing session without exposure to modeling. Strikingly, the differential effect of the conditions for 6‐year‐olds persisted during the second sharing session. Taken together, the findings highlight the developmental emergence of young children's remarkable capacity for fine‐tuned and sustained social learning.
