L. Rowell Huesmann, Amos N. Tversky collegiate emeritus professor of communication studies and psychology and research professor in the Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, the University of Michigan, passed away peacefully at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on December 21, 2025. Rowell was an internationally recognized scholar. His research focused on understanding the causes of aggressive and violent behavior and how those causes exert influence. He developed an integrated social-cognitive model to explain how aggression is learned over time from childhood onward and how it transmits across generations. Rowell achieved many academic honors during his distinguished career and his greatest academic enjoyment was in mentoring the next generation of aggression researchers, whom he trained and then treated as collaborators. Rowell was intellectually intense, organized, determined, detail oriented, and generous with his time and energy for his family, friends, and students. He was a die-hard fan of the Michigan Wolverines, a sports enthusiast and life-long athlete, and a world traveler a few times over and well read. Rowell was preceded in death by the love of his life, Penny, to whom he was married for 60 years, and he is survived by his children, Kimberly (John) Larsen and Graham Rowell, and grandchildren, Nicholas, Ryan, and McKenna. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective. Early childhood exposure to violent media content represents an actionable target for preventive intervention. The associated risks for later aggressive behavior have been established in childhood, but few studies have explored widespread long-term associations with antisocial behavior. We investigate prospective associations between exposure to violent television content in early childhood and subsequent antisocial behavior in mid-adolescence. Method. Participants are 963 girls and 982 boys from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD) birth cohort. Parents reported the frequency of their child’s exposure to violent television content at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years. Four indicators of antisocial behavior were self-reported by participants at age 15 years. These indicators were linearly regressed on exposure to violent television content at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years. All analyses, stratified by sex, controlled for pre-existing and concurrent potential individual and family confounding variables. Results. For boys, preschool violent televiewing was associated with increases in proactive aggression (β = 0.065; 95% CI, 0.001 to 0.089), physical aggression (β = 0.074; 95% CI, 0.040 to 0.487), and antisocial behavior (β = 0.076; 95% CI, 0.013 to 0.140) by mid-adolescence. No prospective associations were found for girls. Conclusions. This study of typically developing children demonstrates long-term perils associated with early exposure to violent content in childhood. We observed risks for aggressive and delinquent behavior in boys, more than a decade later. Preventive intervention campaigns that target knowledge transfer to parents and communities regarding the potential insidious consequences of preschool exposure promise more optimal development in youth.

Based on the social ecological systems framework and the family stress model, we examine a model in which the family's exposure to ethnic-political violence in the Middle East predicts negative family functioning, which in turn predicts subsequent harsh physical punishment toward one's children, and in turn, children's aggression by late adolescence/early adulthood. Beginning in 2007, we collected four waves of data from Israeli Jewish (N=451 at Wave 1) and Palestinian (N=600 at Wave 1) youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents. We found that exposure to ethnic-political violence increases harsh parenting and, subsequently, child aggression, via processes emanating from the family context (interparental aggression) in line with theorizing from the family stress and ecological systems frameworks. These results highlight the usefulness of applying the family stress model to families exposed to ethnic-political violence, and the need for multi-level interventions for these families.

Background: Preschool bedroom television placement represents an established risk factor for negative psychological and behavioral outcomes in adolescence. Girls and boys have different risk factors for developmental psychopathology. It is unclear if childhood sport participation can act as a protective factor for the potential maladaptive behaviors associated with having a bedroom television in early childhood. Methods: This study aims to evaluate the impact of having a bedroom television in early childhood on later externalizing behaviors while examining the potential beneficial role of extracurricular sport participation in middle childhood using the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (Canada). We examine subsequent teacher-reported psycho-social outcomes by the end of sixth grade. Linear regression is used to examine the interaction between child-reported bedroom television placement (age 4 years) and parent-reported childhood sport participation trajectories (ages 6 to 10 years) in predicting behavioral outcomes at age 12 years. Results: For boys, extracurricular sport amplified the relationship between having a preschool bedroom television and subsequent physical aggression (b = 0.95, SE = 0.32, p < 0.001) and ADHD symptoms (b = 0.59, SE = 0.30, p ≤ 0.05), beyond individual and family characteristics. No interaction results were found for girls; however, consistent sport participation between ages 6 and 10 years resulted in a decrease in ADHD symptoms in girls (b = −0.329, SE = 0.102, p ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: Unexpectedly, for boys exposed to early bedroom television, consistently participating in extracurricular sport in childhood exacerbated long-term behavioral risks. Social unpreparedness from bedroom television placement countered the intended benefits of sport. This private access to screens might influence sedentary, unsupervised, isolated activity that increases the chances of viewing violence and reduces opportunities for social interaction.

Objective:A prominent theory accounting for the development and maintenance of aggressive behavior from childhood to adolescence is the social cognitive model, which holds that aggressive behavior is sustained over time through various context-dependent beliefs, biases, and schemas that emerge through repeated observation of aggressive social interactions. In this study, we provide a novel test of whether this model could also account for late adolescent and young adult weapon use. Method:We use integrative data analysis to combine information from two longitudinal studies of youth in urban areas (Study 1: N=426, 4 waves over 13 years, from ages 8 to 27; Study 2: N=200, 4 waves over 4 years, from ages 15 to 18; total N=626, 51% female, 56% Black). Data consists of both youth and parent report. Results:We show that normative beliefs supporting aggression promote the observational learning of weapon use in late adolescence and early adulthood. In addition, we show that these normative beliefs that promote the observational learning of weapon use in late adolescence and early adulthood are significantly stronger for people who 8-years earlier scored higher on callousness who held normative beliefs approving of retaliatory aggression at that time. Conclusions:The results of this study suggest that interventions in childhood and adolescence that counteract normative beliefs approving of aggression and that reduce callousness will lessen the likelihood of the later imitation of observed neighborhood weapon violence by the intervened youth.

Background and Purpose: Childhood bedroom screens represent a risk factor for negative behavioral outcomes. Childhood sport participation might be a protective factor for potential negative associations with having a bedroom screen in early childhood. Methods: This study examines whether extracurricular sport participation in middle childhood reduces developmental risks associated with bedroom screens in boys and girls. We use a millennial birth cohort from the QLSCD. Children reported having a bedroom television at age 4 years. Parents reported child participation in sport from ages 6 to 10 years. We examine subsequent teacher-reported depressive symptoms and shyness outcomes by the end of sixth grade. We used linear regression to examine the interaction between child-reported bedroom television placement (age 4 years) and parent-reported childhood sport participation trajectories (ages 6 to 10 years) in predicting behavioral outcomes at age 12 years. Key Results: For girls, inconsistent extracurricular sport amplified the relationship between having a preschool bedroom television and subsequent shyness (b = 0.6212, SE = 0.3245, p < 0.05), beyond individual and family characteristics. Conclusions: Less consistent sport participation was associated with increased risk of shyness in girls having grown up with a bedroom television. These findings corroborate that extracurricular activity can be a suitable candidate for enhancing skills and social interactions.

OBJECTIVE:Callousness has been identified as a key driver of aggressive and violent behavior from childhood into early adulthood. Although previous research has underscored the importance of the parenting environment in contributing to the development of youth callousness, findings have generally been confined to the between-individual level and have not examined bidirectionality. In the current study, we test whether aspects of parenting are associated with callousness from childhood to adolescence both between and within individuals, examine the temporal ordering of associations, and test whether these relations are moderated by gender or developmental stage. METHOD:Data came from a longitudinal study in which parents of 1,421 youth (52% girls; 62% White and 22% Black) from the second, fourth, and ninth grades were interviewed three times, with one year between consecutive interviews. RESULTS:A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model indicated that elevated youth callousness predicts subsequent increases in parental rejection and decreases in consistency of discipline. Findings were largely similar for boys and girls, but within-individual associations were generally stronger for 4th graders compared to the 2nd and 9th graders. CONCLUSIONS:Callousness and parenting practices and attitudes were related both at the between-individual and within-individual level. These results have implications for the etiology and treatment of children and adolescents who exhibit callousness.

According to social-cognitive ecological theory, violence exposure increases emotional factors-such as callous-unemotional (CU) traits-which then contribute to engagement in aggressive behavior. However, previous research has generally not tested this mediational pathway, particularly in the context of persistent ethnic-political violence exposure. The present study examined associations among violence exposure, CU traits, and aggression in a sample of 1051 youth in the Middle East (Palestine and Israel), using youth- and parent-reported data in a cohort-sequential design with three age cohorts (starting ages 8, 11, and 14 years) assessed over four waves spanning 6 years. Results from structural equation models with latent variables indicated that cumulative violence exposure in childhood and adolescence (measured annually for 3 years, and comprising exposure across multiple settings including political, community, family, and school) predicted later CU traits and aggression in adolescence and early adulthood, even after controlling for earlier levels of aggression and CU traits and demographic characteristics (child age and sex and parental socioeconomic status). Additionally, in mediation analyses, CU significantly mediated the association from earlier cumulative violence exposure to concurrent aggression, while aggression did not significantly mediate the association from earlier exposure to concurrent CU traits. The results of this study suggest that violence exposure leads to both aggressive behavior and a constellation of traits that place youth at greater risk for subsequent aggressive behavior, and that CU traits could partially explain the increased risk of aggression after violence exposure.

Chronic exposure to ethnic–political and war violence has deleterious effects throughout childhood. Some youths exposed to war violence are more likely to act aggressively afterwards, and some are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS symptoms). However, the concordance of these two outcomes is not strong, and it is unclear what discriminates between those who are at more risk for one or the other. Drawing on prior research on desensitization and arousal and on recent social–cognitive theorizing about how high anxious arousal to violence can inhibit aggression, we hypothesized that those who characteristically experience higher anxious arousal when exposed to violence should display a lower increase in aggression after exposure to war violence but the same or a higher increase in PTS symptoms compared to those low in anxious arousal. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed data from our 4-wave longitudinal interview study of 1051 Israeli and Palestinian youths (ages at Wave 1 ranged from 8 to 14, and at Wave 4 from 15–22). We used the 4 waves of data on aggression, PTS symptoms, and exposure to war violence, along with additional data collected during Wave 4 on the anxious arousal participants experienced while watching a very violent film unrelated to war violence (N = 337). Longitudinal analyses revealed that exposure to war violence significantly increased both the risk of subsequent aggression and PTS symptoms. However, anxious arousal in response to seeing the unrelated violent film (measured from skin conductance and self-reports of anxiety) moderated the relation between exposure to war violence and subsequent psychological and behavioral outcomes. Those who experienced greater anxious arousal while watching the violent film showed a weaker positive relation between amount of exposure to war violence and aggression toward their peers but a stronger positive relation between amount of exposure to war violence and PTS symptoms.

To address a gap in the literature regarding the development of youth disclosure across the transition to adolescence, the current research uses a cohort-sequential approach to study youth disclosure from middle childhood through adolescence. Longitudinal data from three cohorts of parents were utilized (N = 1359; children at T1 were in grades 2 [M = 8.00 years, SD = 0.57 years, 45% female], 4 [M = 10.12 years, SD = 0.60 years, 45% female], and 9 [M = 15.19 years, SD = 0.57 years, 48% female]). Parents were assessed annually over a 3-year time period. The focal analyses explored contemporaneous associations between characteristics of the parent-youth relationship (specifically, parental rejection and parental consistent discipline) and youth disclosure after accounting for person-specific trajectories of disclosure. Associations of gender, age, and socioeconomic status with disclosure were also assessed. Regarding trajectories of youth disclosure, results indicate that youth disclose less information to their parents about their daily lives as they get older; this trend was consistent across gender and socioeconomic status. In terms of associations with youth disclosure, when parents provided more consistent discipline or engaged in less rejection of their child, youth disclosure increased, even after accounting for their own trajectory of disclosure across time. In addition, the association of consistent discipline with youth disclosure became stronger with increased youth age. Results are discussed in terms of implications for understanding youth autonomy development, and the dyadic and developmental impact of parenting behaviors over time.

This study explored how domain-specific perfectionism (academic, social, physical appearance) among high school freshmen relates to internalizing symptoms using critical elements of expectancy-value theory (i.e., domain value and competence) as moderators. Results indicate that perfectionism across all domains was positively and significantly related to internalizing symptoms. Within the social domain, social value was a significant moderator of the relation between perfectionism and internalizing symptoms, and perceived social competence was a significant moderator of that moderation effect (i.e., at higher levels of social value and lower levels of perceived social competence, the relation between perfectionism and internalizing symptoms was the strongest). These findings provide support for the use of the expectancy-value model to predict mental health symptoms in the social domain and suggest the importance of addressing domain-specific perfectionism in the schools.

In this study, we examine whether youth who are exposed to more weapons violence are subsequently more likely to behave violently with weapons. We use data collected with a 3-cohort, 4-wave, 10-year longitudinal study of 426 high-risk youth from Flint, Michigan, who were second, fourth, or ninth-graders in 2006-2007. The data were obtained from individual interviews with the youth, their parents, and their teachers, from archival school and criminal justice records, and from geo-coded criminal offense data. These data show that early exposure to weapons violence significantly correlates at modest levels with weapon carrying, weapon use or threats-to-use, arrests for weapons use, and criminally violent acts 10 years later. Multiple regression analyses, controlling for children's initial aggressiveness, intellectual achievement, and parents' income, education, and aggression, reveal statistically significant independent 10-year effects: (1) more early exposure to weapon use within the family predicts more using or threatening to use a gun; (2) more cumulative early violent video game playing predicts more gun using or threatening to use weapons, and normative beliefs that gun use is acceptable; (3) more cumulative early exposure to neighborhood gun violence predicts more arrests for a weapons crime; and (4) more cumulative early exposure to movie violence predicts more weapon carrying. We argue that youth who observe violence with weapons, whether in the family, among peers, or through the media or video games, are likely to be infected from exposure with a social-cognitive-emotional disease that increases their own risk of behaving violently with weapons later in life.

Recent high-profile incidents involving the deadly application of force in the United States sparked worldwide protests and renewed scrutiny of police practices as well as scrutiny of relations between police officers and minoritized communities. In this report, we consider the inappropriate use of force by police from the perspective of behavioral and social science inquiry related to aggression, violence, and intergroup relations. We examine the inappropriate use of force by police in the context of research on modern policing as well as critical race theory and offer five recommendations suggested by contemporary theory and research. Our recommendations are aimed at policymakers, law enforcement administrators, and scholars and are as follows: (1) Implement public policies that can reduce inappropriate use of force directly and through the reduction of broader burdens on the routine activities of police officers. (2) For officers frequently engaged in use-of-force incidents, ensure that best practice, evidence-based treatments are available and required. (3) Improve and increase the quality and delivery of noncoercive conflict resolution training for all officers, along with police administrative policies and supervision that support alternatives to the use of force, both while scaling back the militarization of police departments. (4) Continue the development and evaluation of multicomponent interventions for police departments, but ensure they incorporate evidence-based, field-tested components. (5) Expand research in the behavioral and social sciences aimed at understanding and managing use-of-force by police and reducing its disproportionate impact on minoritized communities, and expand funding for these lines of inquiry.

Research links perfectionism, the tendency to hold and pursue unrealistically high standards, to negative mental health outcomes such as eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. Previous research used high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) to measure recovery from stress during a mindfulness meditation in perfectionistic university students and found that only nonperfectionists demonstrated HF-HRV recovery from stress, suggesting that mindfulness was not effective for perfectionists. However, the mindfulness meditation did not incorporate a nonjudgment element, which may be a key component for perfectionists. In the current study, we examined whether mindfulness with a focus on nonjudgment helps university student perfectionists (n = 120) recover from failure (measured by heart rate (HR), HF-HRV, pNN50). Students were randomly assigned to one of four meditation groups: nonjudgment mindfulness, general mindfulness (i.e., attentional awareness without a nonjudgment component), progressive muscle relaxation, and nothing. Cardiac data were recorded during a 5-min baseline, failure task, and 10-min meditation session. HR results suggest that both mindfulness conditions and "nothing" encouraged cardiovascular recovery, but that the mindfulness conditions showed even further recovery during the last five minutes of the meditations. HF-HRV results indicated that participants in the nonjudgment mindfulness condition had marginally higher HF-HRV during the last five minutes of the meditation than at baseline, while participants in the other conditions did not. Therefore, mindfulness with a focus on nonjudgment of emotions may be especially important to help perfectionists improve HF-HRV after failure.

Political violence and armed conflict are a worldwide problem that exposes families to extreme acts of violence, disrupts community and family economic conditions, compromises family functioning and parenting behaviors, and has deleterious effects on children’s development. In this chapter, we describe two overarching, complementary theoretical frameworks that can explain how exposure to political violence affects family functioning: Bronfenbrenner’s model of hierarchically nested ecological ecosystems and a related model within developmental psychology, the family stress model. Using data from our Palestinian-Israeli exposure to violence study, a prospective study of 1,501 Palestinian and Israeli families, we examine a mediational model showing that the family’s exposure to ethnic-political violence predicts negative family functioning (parental depressive symptoms and marital aggression), which in turn predicts subsequent harsh physical punishment toward one’s children.

We examine whether cumulative-past and concurrent exposure to ethnic-political violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth predict serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes toward the in-group and the out-group. We collected four waves of data from 162 Israeli Jewish and 400 Palestinian youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents. The first three waves were consecutive annual assessments, and the fourth was conducted 4 years after the third wave, when the three age cohorts were 14, 17, and 20 years old, respectively. Based on social-cognitive-ecological models of the development of aggression (Dubow et al., 2009, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 12, 113-126; Huesmann, 1998) and models of the development of beliefs about the "other," (Bar-Tal, 2004, European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 677-701; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), we predicted that serious violent outcomes directed toward both the in-group and the out-group would be related to both concurrent and to persistent-past exposure to ethnic political violence. Bivariate regression models (prior to including covariates) indicated that both early cumulative exposure to ethnic-political violence during childhood and adolescence and concurrent exposure during late adolescence/early adulthood predicted all six serious violent and antisocial outcomes. When we added to the models the covariates of ethnic subgroup, age, sex, parents' education, and youths' prior physical aggression, concurrent exposure to ethnic-political violence was still significantly associated with a greater likelihood of concurrently perpetrating all six serious violent and nonviolent forms of antisocial behavior, and earlier cumulative exposure remained significantly related to three of these: severe physical aggression, participating in violent demonstrations, and our overall index of violent/antisocial behavior.

Cyber-victimization has become a serious concern facing adolescents in the digital age. Given the differences and similarities between cyber-victimization and in-person victimization, research needs to examine whether prior understanding of coping with in-person victimization applies to coping with cyber-victimization. The purpose of this study was to compare the use and effectiveness of coping strategies in both in-person and cyber-victimization contexts in a sample of adolescents (N = 321; 11-15 years old) in the United States. Results indicated that adolescents tend to use more strategies overall to cope with in-person victimization than cyber-victimization, and female adolescents used more distraction and social support from friends than male adolescents. Adolescents also used problem solving, social support from friends and family/adults, and distraction more frequently than distancing and retaliation; when problem solving was used, adolescents felt positive about the outcome, regardless of victimization type. The use of retaliation was negatively associated with coping efficacy for both situations. Further, social support from friends and social support from family/adults were associated with coping efficacy for cyber-victimization. Our findings can be used to inform interventionists about which strategies adolescents perceive work best to cope with cyber-victimization.