Socialization and Individual Antecedents of Adolescents' and Young Adults' Moral Motivation

Socialization and individual differences were examined as antecedents of moral motivation in representative samples of 15-year-old adolescents (N=1,258; 54% female) and 21-year-old young adults (N=584; 53% female). The adolescents' primary caregivers (N=1,056) also participated. The strength of moral motivation was rated by participants' responses to two hypothetical moral dilemmas in terms of action decisions, emotion attributions, and justifications. Socialization was measured by the perceived quality of friendship, parent-child relationships, and educational background. The importance attached to social justice and various personality traits were also assessed. Adolescents' moral motivation was positively associated with the quality of their parent-child relationship and the importance of social justice. Young adults' moral motivation was predicted by the perceived quality of friendships, the importance of social justice, and agreeableness. For both groups, moral motivation was greater in females. The theoretical implications of the findings for the development of moral motivation are discusse

Cross-Informant Assessment of Children’s Sympathy: Disentangling Trait and State Agreement

The use of multiple informants (e.g., caregivers and teachers) is recommended to obtain a comprehensive profile of children’s social emotional development. Evidence to date indicates that only a small-to-moderate degree of convergence exists between different informants’ assessments of children’s social-emotional functioning, especially when the contexts of such informants’ observations are also different. However, whether caregivers and teachers primarily disagree about children’s dispositional emotional tendencies or situational emotional fluctuations remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the extent to which caregivers and teachers converged in their evaluation of children’s dispositional and state sympathy (i.e., a relatively internal and low visibility emotional response of concern for another’s wellbeing) in a nationally representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273) followed from 6 to 12 years of age. Using analyses based in latent state–trait theory, we found that caregivers and teachers showed moderate-to-large agreement (r = .510) at the dispositional, trait level of children’s sympathy, but only a small level of agreement in their assessments of children’s situational, state-like manifestations of sympathy (r = .123). These findings highlight the differential convergence of adults’ ratings of one core dimension of children’s social-emotional development, i.e., sympathy, at the dispositional and situational levels, and, relatedly the need to investigate the reasons behind discrepancies at both levels of analysis. We elaborate on practical implications for designing social-emotional screening tools across different informants and contexts

The Future of Research on Evidence-based Developmental Violence Prevention in Europe – Introduction to the Focus Section

Across Europe, there is an increasing demand for good evidence that can inform policies aimed at reducing violence against and among children and adolescents. However, there is still a paucity of high-quality research on effective prevention of bullying and violence, and researchers from different parts of Europe rarely discuss their findings. The focus section of this issue of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence brings together work by prominent prevention scholars from across Europe, who show that significant progress is being made. The introduction presents nine recommendations about how prevention research could be further strengthened in Europe

Selektionsprozesse beim Übergang in die Sekundarstufe I und II

Zusammenfassung: Ziel der Studie ist es, die Bedeutung den Einfluss Umfelds, der Noten und Leistungen sowie des Sozialverhaltens von Schülerinnen und Schülern im Unterricht auf Bildungsverläufe zu untersuchen. Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts Familie-Schule-Beruf (FASE B) wurde eine repräsentative Längsschnittstichprobe von 454 Schülerinnen und Schülern und deren primären Bezugspersonen im Kanton Bern (Schweiz) genutzt. In stufenweisen logistischen Regressionsanalysen wurde untersucht, wie familiäre und individuelle Determinanten am Ende der Primarschule das Schulniveau in die Sekundarstufe I und den weiteren Bildungsverlauf in die Sekundarstufe II (Gymnasium vs. Berufsbildung) vorhersagten. Der Übertritt in die Sekundarstufe I hing stärker von Noten als von Leistungstestergebnissen ab. Elternerwartungen, Schichtzugehörigkeit und Verhaltensauffälligkeiten im Unterricht waren ebenfalls bedeutsam. Elternerwartungen sagten den Bildungsverlauf über zwei Schultransitionen hinweg vorher, während Noten in Deutsch und das Geschlecht nur tendenziell signifikant waren. Elternerwartungen erlauben präzise Vorhersagen von Bildungsverläufen über zwei Schultransitionen, auch nach Kontrolle von Noten und Leistungen der Kinde

Children's Peer Victimization, Empathy, and Emotional Symptoms

This study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relations among children's peer victimization, empathy, and emotional symptoms. The sample consisted of 175 children (85 girls, mean age=6.1years) recruited from kindergartens in Switzerland and followed for 1year (Time 2). Parents and teachers reported on the children's emotional symptoms, empathy, and victimization. Children reported their empathy and victimization experiences. Peer victimization was a predictor of emotional symptoms at Time 1; this association was stronger for children with average or high levels of empathy. Increases in peer victimization predicted increases in boys' emotional symptoms, and increases in victimization were related to decreases in empathy. The results emphasize the role of negative peer relations and children's social-emotional information processing for the development of emotional symptom

Different Traumatic Experiences are Associated with Different Pathologies

We tested the hypothesis that different traumatic experiences will contribute in variable degree to different mental pathologies. A total of 223 young adult non-patients were assessed with the help of self-reports. The role of six different trauma experiences (broken home, dysfunctional family, family violence, child sexual abuse, child severe sexual abuse and adult sexual abuse) in six different conditions/pathologies (alexithymia, depression, somatization, borderline, overall physical health and overall mental health) was tested in a series of multivariate analyses of variance and of Roy-Bargmann stepdown analyses. The hypothesis was confirmed: Individual traumatic experiences were indeed associated with different pathologies. Specifically, sexual abuse predicted borderline pathology, severe child sexual abuse somatization, and dysfunctional or broken family depression. Family violence was associated with worse overall mental health and alexithymia, whereas no trauma variable could be identified to be associated with overall physical health. Most of these individual relationships were reported in the literature, based on results obtained in different clinical samples. Our results were won in a sample of young non-patients controlling for overlap between pathologie

Effectiveness of a Universal School-Based Social Competence Program: The Role of Child Characteristics and Economic Factors

An evaluation of the effectiveness of a school-based social competence curriculum PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) on teacher-rated aggressive behavior, ADHD, and prosocial behavior in children. The one-year prevention program was administered to children in 28 of 56 Swiss elementary schools (N = 1,675). Outcomes were assessed at pretest and posttest with a follow-up 2 years later. Moderator interactions involving baseline child characteristics and economic factors were tested. There were significant treatment effects for ADHD/impulsivity and aggression at the follow-up. Baseline development variables predicted higher prosocial behavior as well as lower aggressive behavior and ADHD at the follow-up. Economic risk factors predicted poor behavior outcomes at the follow-up. Development variablesmoderated the impact of PATHS on ADHD and aggression at the follow-up. However, for most outcomes, no main effects or moderation of treatment effects were found

From Clinical-Developmental Theory to Assessment: The Holistic Student Assessment Tool

A description and test of the Holistic Student Assessment Tool (HSA), an assessment tool to measure children’s and adolescents’ resiliencies in relation to externalizingand internalizing problem behaviors. The HSA is based on the authors’ research-based clinical-developmental Clover Leaf Model of resilience and psychopathology, and is one of the first attempts at closing the gap between risk and resilience approaches in developmental assessment. The HSA was tested in a cross-sectional sample of 423 children and adolescents.The results lend support to the HSA as a valid measure of children’s and adolescents’ resiliencies. Furthermore, the resilience scales mostly exhibited the theoreticallyexpected convergent and divergent relationships with the psychopathology scales. In addition, we show how the resilience scales predict adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing symptoms. We contend that evidence-based intervention to address youth aggression needs to be based on sound developmental assessment

The codevelopment of sympathy and overt aggression from middle childhood to early adolescence

We assessed the extent to which feelings of sympathy and aggressive behaviors codeveloped from 6 to 12 years of age in a representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273). Caregivers and teachers reported children's sympathy and overt aggression in 3-year intervals. Second-order latent curve models indicated general mean-level declines in sympathy and overt aggression over time, although the decline in sympathy was relatively small. Importantly, both trajectories were characterized by significant interindividual variability. A bivariate second-order latent curve model revealed a small-moderate negative correlation between the latent slopes of sympathy and overt aggression, suggesting an inverse codevelopmental relationship between the constructs from middle childhood to early adolescence. In terms of predictive effects, an autoregressive cross-lagged model indicated a lack of bidirectional relations between sympathy and overt aggression, underscoring the primacy of the variables' rank-order stability. We discuss the codevelopment and developmental relations of sympathy and aggression, their potential conjoint social-emotional mechanisms, and the practical implications thereof