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Sensation seeking is an important underlying factor of both positive and negative forms of risk-taking during adolescence and early adulthood. However, macro-factors such as the global COVID-19 pandemic may influence sensation seeking opportunities and risk-taking behaviors that are considered negative and positive. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to examine the associations between sensation seeking and behaviors that are considered positive or negative forms of risk-taking during the Covid-19 pandemic in a sample of adolescents and early adults (N = 660, Mage = 22.91, SD = 3.14). Using citizen science methods, negative risk-taking was defined as taking unaccepted risks, such as falsifying vaccination reports or deliberately contracting COVID-19. Positive risk-taking was defined as taking socially accepted risks, such as balancing between the risk to infect elderly people and the need to socialize with peers. Results showed that participants with higher levels of sensation seeking took more positive and negative COVID-19 related risks. An additional finding was that sensation seeking was positively associated with the need to contribute to society. This indicates that during adolescence and early adulthood, sensation seeking may be a driving factor for both positive (i.e., socially accepted) and negative (i.e., socially unaccepted) risk-taking in the context of a high-stake global pandemic, arguing against a one-direction negative relation between sensation seeking and risk-taking.

Developing social skills is essential to succeed in social relations. Two important social constructs in middle childhood, prosocial behavior and reactive aggression, are often regarded as separate behaviors with opposing developmental outcomes. However, there is increasing evidence for the co-occurrence of prosociality and aggression, as both might indicate responsivity to the social environment. Here, we tested whether a bi-dimensional taxonomy of prosociality and reactive aggression could predict internalizing and externalizing problems over time. We re-analyzed data of two well-validated experimental tasks for prosociality (the Prosocial Cyberball Game) and reactive aggression (the Social Network Aggression Task) in a developmental population sample (n = 496, 7–9 years old). Results revealed no associations between prosociality and reactive aggression, confirming the independence of those constructs. Interestingly, although prosociality and reactive aggression independently did not predict problem behavior, the interaction of both was negatively predictive of changes in externalizing problems over time. Specifically, only children who scored low on both prosociality and reactive aggression showed an increase in externalizing problems 1 year later, whereas levels of externalizing problems did not change for children who scored high on both types of behavior. Thus, our results suggest that at an individual level, reactive aggression in middle childhood might not always be maladaptive when combined with prosocial behavior, thereby confirming the importance of studying social competence across multiple dimensions.

Empathy plays a crucial role in healthy social functioning and in maintaining positive social relationships. In this study, 1250 children and adolescents (10–15 year olds) completed the newly developed Empathy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (EmQue-CA) that was tested on reliability, construct validity, convergent validity, and concurrent validity. The EmQue-CA aims to assess empathy using the following scales: affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and intention to comfort. A Principal Components Analysis, which was directly tested with a Confirmatory Factor Analysis, confirmed the proposed three-factor model resulting in 14 final items. Reliability analyses demonstrated high internal consistency of the scales. Furthermore, the scales showed high convergent validity, as they were positively correlated with related scales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983). With regard to concurrent validity, higher empathy was related to more attention to others’ emotions, higher friendship quality, less focus on own affective state, and lower levels of bullying behavior. Taken together, we show that the EmQue-CA is a reliable and valid instrument to measure empathy in typically developing children and adolescents aged 10 and older.

The present study examined the influence of relevant and irrelevant emotions on response inhibition from childhood to early adulthood. Ninety-four participants between 6 and 25 years of age performed two go/nogo tasks with emotional faces (neutral, happy, and fearful) as stimuli. In one go/nogo task emotion formed a relevant dimension of the task and in the other go/nogo task emotion was irrelevant and participants had to respond to the color of the faces instead. A special feature of the latter task, in which emotion was irrelevant, was the inclusion of free choice trials, in which participants could freely decide between acting and inhibiting. Results showed a linear increase in response inhibition performance with increasing age both in relevant and irrelevant affective contexts. Relevant emotions had a pronounced influence on performance across age, whereas irrelevant emotions did not. Overall, participants made more false alarms on trials with fearful faces than happy faces, and happy faces were associated with better performance on go trials (higher percentage correct and faster RTs) than fearful faces. The latter effect was stronger for young children in terms of accuracy. Finally, during the free choice trials participants did not base their decisions on affective context, confirming that irrelevant emotions do not have a strong impact on inhibition. Together, these findings suggest that across development relevant affective context has a larger influence on response inhibition than irrelevant affective context. When emotions are relevant, a context of positive emotions is associated with better performance compared to a context with negative emotions, especially in young children.