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This paper used cross-lagged panel models to test the longitudinal interplay between maternal cultural socialization, peer ethnic-racial discrimination, and ethnic-racial pride across 5th to 11th grade among Mexican American youth (N = 674, Mage  = 10.86; 72% born in the United States; 50% girls; Wave 1 collected 2006-2008). Maternal cultural socialization predicted increases in subsequent youth ethnic-racial pride, and youth ethnic-racial pride prompted greater maternal cultural socialization. However, peer ethnic-racial discrimination was associated with subsequent decreases in ethnic-racial pride. The magnitude of these associations was consistent across 5th to 11th grades suggesting that maternal cultural socialization messages are necessary to maintain ethnic-racial pride across adolescence, thus families must continually support the development of ethnic-racial pride in their youth to counter the effects of discrimination.

Relations among White (non-Latinx) children's empathy-related responding, prosocial behaviors, and racial attitudes toward White and Black peers were examined. In 2017, 190 (54% boys) White 5- to 9-year-old children (M = 7.09 years, SD = 0.94) watched a series of videos that depicted social rejection of either a White or Black child. Empathy-related responses, prosocial behaviors, and racial attitudes were measured using multiple methods. Results showed that younger children showed less facial concern toward Black than White peers and greater increases with age in concern and prosocial behaviors (sharing a desirable prize) for Black, compared to White, targets. Children's facial anger increased with age for White but not Black targets. The findings can extend our understanding children's anti-racism development.

Relational aggression-a psychological form of aggression-has numerous negative consequences for physical and emotional health. However, little is known about the risk factors that lead youth to engage in relational aggression. Using multimethod data from a longitudinal research of 674 Mexican-origin youth, this study examined the influence of parents, siblings, and peers on the development of relational aggression. Increases in relational aggression from age 10 to 16 were associated with: (a) low levels of parental monitoring and (b) increased association with deviant peers and siblings. These results held across gender and nativity status. The findings suggest that multiple socialization agents contribute to the development of relational aggression. We discuss the practical implications for reducing relational aggression during adolescence.

Peer problems are linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and the serotonin system is thought to be involved in ADHD-related behavior. Hence, from a Gene × Environment perspective, the serotonin transporter 5-HTTLPR may play a moderating role. In two large community samples, the moderating role of 5-HTTLPR was examined related to more hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms (HI symptoms) predicted by more peer problems. In Study 1, involving 642 Norwegian children, results indicated that for s-allele carriers only, caregiver-reported peer problems at age 4 predicted more parent-reported HI symptoms at age 6. In Study 2, similar results emerged involving 482 American children. Discussion focuses on differential sensitivity to the adverse effects of poor peer relations.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) predicts poor peer relationships. What remains unclear is whether poor peer relationships affect ADHD symptomatology. Hence, reciprocal effects of peer rejection and ADHD symptoms were examined in a community sample of 962 Norwegian children at ages 4, 6, and 8. Results showed that ADHD symptoms at age 4 predicted more peer rejection at age 6, and that peer rejection at age 4 predicted more symptoms at age 6. However, when conducting analyses on ADHD subtypes, hyperactivity-impulsivity and inattentiveness symptoms were adversely affected by peer rejection at ages 6 and 8, whereas peer rejection was unaffected by such symptoms, indicating that the effect of peer rejection on ADHD symptoms was most robust. Mediational relation were also identified.

This study examined whether conformity to high- but not low-status e-confederates was associated with increases in identification with popular peers and subsequent increases in self-esteem. A sample of 250 adolescents (55.1% male; M age  = 12.70 years; 40.3% White, 28.2% Black, 23.4% Hispanic/Latino, and 7.7% multiracial/other) participated in a well-established experimental chat room paradigm where they were exposed to norms communicated by high- and low-status e-confederates. Results revealed that for boys in the high-status condition only, but not girls, the positive relation between conformity and self-esteem was mediated by greater response alignment with popular peers. These findings bolster prior research by suggesting that conformity to popular peers may be partly motivated by drives for self-esteem and alignment with a valued reference group., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Research shows that peer relationships are associated with students' school adjustment. However, the importance of advantageous and disadvantageous factors for students' educational outcomes may vary by socioeconomic positioning. Drawing on sociometric and register data from a nationally representative sample of Swedish youth (n = 4996, girls 50%; migration background 19%), this study asks if family socioeconomic status moderates associations between youth's peer relationships and their subsequent educational outcomes. Based on preregistered analyses, associations that peer acceptance and rejection at age 14-15 years share with school grades at ~16 years and completion of upper secondary school at ~20 years were tested. The findings showed that positive and adverse peer relationships are most consequential for the educational outcomes of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Limited research has investigated the changes in ethnic-racial support that adolescents received during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study collected 2-week, daily data from 185 Midwest U.S. ethnic-racial minority adolescents (14.60 years old; 52% female) at two waves, spanning about 1 year apart. For the Pandemic Cohort (936 days of data, 41 participants; 2019-2020), peer cultural socialization declined significantly from before to during the pandemic; family cultural socialization, as well as family and peer support against discrimination, became more positively associated with same-day ethnic-racial identity over the pandemic ( β  = .13-.16). No significant changes emerged for the pre-Pandemic Cohort (3304 days of data, 144 participants; 2017-2019). Findings highlight the importance of ethnic-racial support during the pandemic when ethnic-racial issues were amplified in society., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Using 10-day daily diary data collected in 2019 from 10th grade students in southern U.S. (N = 161, 57% Latina/x/o, 21% Biracial, 10% Asian, 9% White, 4% Black; 55% female, M age  = 15.51), this study examined various forms of peer-based discrimination in adolescents' everyday lives. Results showed that personally experienced discrimination, peer racial teasing, and vicarious discrimination were frequent and impactful events. Results also provided strong evidence for the protective role of psychological resilience and some evidence for the protective-reactive roles of peer support and school climate in moderating the link between peer-based discrimination and daily well-being. The findings highlight the necessity to eliminate peer-based discrimination and shed light on interventions to reduce the harmful effects of peer-based discrimination on adolescents' daily well-being., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study investigated predictors of adolescent girls' experiences with sexism and feminism. Girls (N = 600; M = 15.1 years, range = 12-18), of varied socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, completed surveys of personal experiences with sexual harassment, academic sexism (regarding science, math, and computer technology), and athletics. Most girls reported sexual harassment (90%), academic sexism (52%), and athletic sexism (76%) at least once, with likelihood increasing with age. Socialization influences and individual factors, however, influenced likelihood of all three forms of sexism. Specifically, learning about feminism and gender-conformity pressures were linked to higher perceptions of sexism. Furthermore, girls' social gender identity (i.e., perceived gender typicality and gender-role contentedness) and gender-egalitarian attitudes were related to perceived sexism.

This study examines the development of children's self-assessment of their prosociality in normative social comparisons with an average peer, who was either a concrete individual, or an abstract one, at a school of average socioeconomic level in south Israel (N = 148, Age 6-12 years, 51% females; June 2021). Results show that older children exhibited the better-than-average (BTA) effect by perceiving themselves as more generous than their average peer. Conversely, younger children exhibited a worse-than-average effect, in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves ( η p 2 = .23 ). Only the older children (aged 8 years onward) were significantly affected by the concreteness of the target of comparison by exhibiting the BTA effect only when the average peer was abstract (not concrete)., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

The present study examined relations between concern for mianzi, or the social perception of one's prestige and standing in the group, and adjustment in Chinese adolescents. Participants were seventh- and ninth-grade students in rural and urban regions of China (n = 794, M age  = 14 years). Data were obtained from multiple sources including peer assessments, teacher ratings, self-reports, and school records. The results showed that concern for mianzi was associated with social competence, leadership, academic achievement, as well as aggression and mixed peer relationships in rural adolescents. In contrast, concern for mianzi was associated with comprehensive social, school, and psychological adjustment problems in urban adolescents. The results indicate the role of context in shaping the relations between adolescents' concern for mianzi and adjustment., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study examined how youth morally deliberate about conditions of gang violence shaping their communities. Participants (N = 80; 10-11 and 14-15 years; 50% female) exposed to gangs (maras) in Honduras and not exposed to maras in Nicaragua evaluated hypothetical situations of physical harm in contexts of chronic gang violence. Results indicated that mara-exposed youth were more likely to endorse harming a rival gang member in some contexts, but not others. Moreover, in some contexts, males were more likely to endorse harming others as necessary. Few age differences emerged, suggesting comparability among children and adolescents. Discussion focuses on how children and adolescents coordinate different moral and social concepts and concerns pertaining to acts of physical harm in situations involving gangs., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

According to the failure model (Patterson & Capaldi, 1990), peer rejection is the intermediary link between problem behaviors and internalizing symptoms. The present study tested the model with 464 monozygotic and same-sex dizygotic twin pairs (234 female, 230 male dyads). Teacher-reported reactive aggression and internalizing symptoms, and peer-reported peer rejection were collected at ages 6, 7, and 10 (from 2001 to 2008). Support for the failure model emerged in conventional non-genetically controlled analyses, but not twin-difference score analyses (which remove shared environmental and genetic contributions). Univariate biometric models attributed minimal variance in failure model variables to shared environmental factors, suggesting that genetic factors play an important unacknowledged role in developmental pathways historically ascribed to nonshared experiences in the failure model., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Loneliness is a perceived deficit in social relationships that is nested within broader cultural meaning systems. This longitudinal study examined predictors of loneliness in Chinese and U.S. children with the hypothesis that peer relationship parameters (number of friends, social preference, and popularity) mediate the associations between behavior qualities and loneliness differently across countries. Fifth-grade Chinese (n = 576, M age  = 10.58 years) and U.S. (White, Black, Asian, n = 540; M age  = 10.23 years) children completed two waves of assessment within an academic year. Shyness and athletic competence more strongly predicted loneliness for U.S. children, and academic ability, and aggression more strongly predicted loneliness for Chinese children. Popularity was a mediator for U.S. children but not Chinese children., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study examined the motivation and mathematics achievement of Asian-American, Caucasian-American, and East Asian students. Subjects were 304 Asian-American, 1,958 Caucasian-American, 1,475 Chinese (Taiwan), and 1,120 Japanese eleventh graders (mean age = 17.6 years). Students were given a curriculum-based mathematics test and a questionnaire. Mathematics scores of the Asian-American students were higher than those of Caucasian-American students but lower than those of Chinese and Japanese students. Factors associated with the achievement of Asian-American and East Asian students included having parents and peers who hold high standards, believing that the road to success is through effort, having positive attitudes about achievement, studying diligently, and facing less interference with their schoolwork from jobs and informal peer interactions. Contrary to the popular belief that Asian-American students' high achievement necessarily takes a psychological toll,they were found not to report a greater frequency of maladjustive symptoms than Caucasian-American students.

Children's discourse with peers was examined in relation to speaker gender, partner gender, and age level. 138 children were matched with either a same- or an other-gender peer at the early childhood and middle childhood age levels (median ages = 5 and 7 years) and asked to play with puppets for 10 min. Speech acts were coded as either collaborative (affiliative involvement and direct influence), controlling (distancing involvement and direct influence), obliging (affiliative involvement and nondirect influence), or withdrawing (distancing involvement and nondirect influence). Girls' and boys' communication patterns were more similar than different. However, gender-related differences with medium to large effect sizes were found. Gender-typed communications were more likely at the middle childhood than the early childhood age level and in same-gender than mixed-gender dyads. The findings are interpreted in terms of developmental and contextual accounts of gender and social behavior. Recommendations for future research are offered.

This study examined whether having vulnerable friends helps or hurts victimized and depressed (i.e., vulnerable) adolescents and whether this depends on classroom supportive norms. Students (n = 1461, 46.7% girls, 93.4% Han nationality) were surveyed four times from seventh and eighth grade (M age  = 13 years) in 2015 and 2016 in Central China. Longitudinal social network analyses indicated that having vulnerable friends can both hurt and help vulnerable adolescents. Depressed adolescents with depressed friends increased in victimization over time. Victimized adolescents with victimized friends increased in victimization but decreased in depressive symptoms. These processes were most likely in classrooms with high supportive norms. Having friends and a supportive classroom may hurt vulnerable adolescents' social position but help victims' emotional development., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

There is limited research on ethnic-racial socialization outside the family context (e.g., in peer groups). Using two-week, daily data from 177 U.S. ethnic-racial minority 9th graders in 2017-2020 (M age  = 14.48 years old; 51% females; 52% Black, 20% Latinx, 10% Asian American, 6% Native American, and 12% Other), this study tested a transactional model of family and peer ethnic-racial socialization, identity, and discrimination. Bidirectional associations were observed between family and peer cultural socialization across days (βs = .09-.10). Peer but not family cultural socialization promoted adolescents' ethnic-racial identity on the next day (βs = .07-.10). Ethnic-racial discrimination predicted greater next-day family ethnic-racial socialization (cultural socialization, preparation for bias; βs = .08-.11), whereas family and peer ethnic-racial socialization predicted next-day discrimination (βs = .11-.18). The differential roles of family and peer ethnic-racial socialization are discussed., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

How 3- to 11-year-old children integrate recipients' merit and social status when allocating resources was examined in 2021 and 2022. Study 1 (Han Chinese, n = 309, 150 girls) showed that while children prioritized merit, they developed from favoring high-status recipients to favoring low-status recipients. Study 2 (n = 194, 98 girls) and Study 3 (n = 138, 68 girls) revealed that children held stereotypes about the relation between merit and social status which shifted with age from expecting high-status peers to expecting low-status peers to work harder, these expectations corresponded allocation decisions. These findings suggest children shift from perpetuating to rectifying inequity and changing stereotypes about people of different social status may serve an important function in the process., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Interactions with peers are fundamental to socio-cognitive development, but assessing peer interactions in standardized experiments is challenging. Therefore, researchers commonly utilize puppetry to simulate peers. This Registered Report investigated urban German children's (Age Range  = 3.5-4.5 years; N = 144; 76♀) mind ascriptions and social cognition to test whether they treat puppets like peers, adults, or neither. Children attributed less mind properties to puppets than peers or adults. However, children's social cognition (i.e., normativity, prosociality, and theory of mind) varied little across partners. Puppetry relies on children's ability for pretense, but can provide valid insights into socio-cognitive development. Implications for using puppets as stand-ins for peers in developmental research are discussed., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Prospective associations over a 5-year period were examined among perceived parent, closest friend, and popular peer injunctive norms and the onset and frequency of adolescent substance use within a diverse (53% female, 45.5% White non-Hispanic, 22.3% Hispanic, 21.5% Black, 1% Asian, and 6.4% another race) sample of 868 seventh- and eighth-grade adolescents from 2012 to 2017. Analyses revealed adolescents' substance use norms were more lenient than perceptions of their parents' and stricter than perceptions of their closest friends'. Stricter perceptions of parent and closest friend norms, but not popular peer norms, were significantly associated with a later onset of alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use, and the magnitude of the effect of each source' on later substance use varied across development., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Following 602 Chinese twin pairs (48% male, all Han ethnicity) from primarily lower-than-average socioeconomic status families from early to mid-adolescence (M s  = 12 and 15 in 2006 and 2009), this study investigated gene-environment interplay between perceived parental supervision, peer drunkenness, and adolescent alcohol initiation. For alcohol initiation, shared environmental influences were initially negligible but became substantial. Genetic factors largely explained the links between both correlates with alcohol initiation. Parental supervision amplified genetic risks for alcohol initiation in early adolescence but suppressed it in mid-adolescence. Peer drunkenness augmented genetic and environmental influences at both times. Peer drunkenness showed stronger links and moderating potential than parental supervision. Chinese adolescents show dynamic gene-environment interplay patterns involving parent-child and peer processes in alcohol initiation., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study investigated emotion transmission among peers during middle childhood. Participants included 202 children (111 males; race: 58% African American, 20% European American, 16% Mixed race, 1% Asian American, and 5% Other; ethnicity: 23% Latino(a) and 77% Not Latino(a); M income  = $42,183, SD income  = $43,889; M age  = 9.49; English-speaking; from urban and suburban areas of a mid-Atlantic state in the United States). Groups of four same-sex children interacted in round-robin dyads in 5-min tasks during 2015-2017. Emotions (happy, sad, angry, anxious, and neutral) were coded and represented as percentages of 30-s intervals. Analyses assessed whether children's emotion expression in one interval predicted change in partners' emotion expression in the next interval. Findings suggested: (a) escalation of positive and negative emotion [children's positive (negative) emotion predicts an increase in partners' positive (negative) emotion], and (b) de-escalation of positive and negative emotion (children's neutral emotion predicts a decrease in partners' positive or negative emotion). Importantly, de-escalation involved children's display of neutral emotion and not oppositely valenced emotion., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Anti-bullying interventions often assume that knowing how it feels to be bullied increases empathy for victims. However, longitudinal research on actual experiences of bullying and empathy is lacking. This study investigated whether within-person changes in victimization predicted changes in empathy over 1 year using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Self- and peer-reported victimization, and cognitive and affective empathy for victims were measured in a sample of 15,713 Finnish youth (M age  = 13.23, SD age  = 2.01, 51.6% female; 92.5% had Finnish-speaking parents; data was collected in 2007-2009 when information about participants' race/ethnicity was not available due to ethical guidelines for the protection of personal information). Results indicated small, positive longitudinal associations from victimization to cognitive empathy. Implications for empathy-raising interventions are discussed., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Defending peers who have been bullied is often thought to put defenders at risk of becoming victimized themselves. The study investigated the concurrent and prospective associations between defending and (peer- and self-reported) victimization, and examined popularity and classroom norms as potential moderators. Participants included 4085 Finnish youth (43.9% boys; M age  = 14.56, SD = .75; 97% born in Finland). Concurrently, defending was positively associated with self-reported victimization in classrooms with high bullying-popularity norms (b = .28, SE = .16). Defending was negatively associated with peer-reported victimization in classrooms with high defending-popularity norms (b = -.07, SE = .03). Defending was not significantly associated with future victimization, suggesting that it is generally not a risk factor for victimization., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

This 1-year longitudinal study examined the effects of academic performance and depression in friendships among elementary school children in China. Participants included 1122 children (44% boys) within 561 stable friendship dyads initially in fourth and fifth grades (initial M age  = 11 years). Data on academic performance, depression, and friendship were collected from multiple sources in the period of 2012 to 2014. Dyadic analysis using the actor-partner interdependence model showed that friends' academic performance significantly and positively predicted children's later academic performance, indicating same-domain effects, and significantly and negatively predicted children's later depression, indicating cross-domain effects, with a medium effect size (ε 3  = .70) for the effects of academic performance. The results help understand the role of friendship in children's development in the Chinese context., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development © 2022 Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study examined the role of social goals in shaping children's in vivo emotional responses during a challenging dyadic peer interaction. In all, 132 children (M age  = 9.46 years, SD = 0.33; 50% girls; 72% White) participated in a dyadic social challenge (conflict-of-interest situation) and reported their social goals and emotions during the task, and observers coded child emotions and dyad negativity. Mastery goals predicted more positive emotions unless interactions were highly negative. Performance-avoidance goals predicted more negative emotions, particularly in the context of negative interactions and disappointing outcomes. Performance-approach goals predicted less negative displayed emotions but more negative self-reported emotions. Findings provide novel insights into how context-specific social goals contribute to affective social competence during peer interactions., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Positive peer and romantic relationships are crucial for adolescents' positive adjustment and relationships with parents lay the foundation for these relationships. This longitudinal meta-analysis examined how parent-adolescent relationships continue into later peer and romantic relationships. Included longitudinal studies (k = 54 involving peer relationships, k = 38 involving romantic relationships) contained demographically diverse samples from predominantly Western cultural contexts. Multilevel meta-regressions indicated that supportive and negative parent-adolescent relationships were associated with supportive and negative future peer and romantic relationships. Meta-analytic structural equation modeling (k = 54) indicated that supportive parent-adolescent relationships unidirectionally predicted supportive and negative peer relationships, while negative parent-adolescent relationships were bidirectionally associated with supportive and negative peer relationships. Maintaining mutually supportive relationships with parents may help adolescents to develop positive social relationships., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)