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Victimization through bullying within schools is a serious problem with far-reaching negative consequences for the victims. Research has concluded that certain personality factors, as defined by the Big Five model, are associated with the frequency of bullying victimization experiences, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. However, most longitudinal research to date has focused on workplace experiences. Hence, this project investigated the possible reciprocal relationship between personality factors and bullying experiences in the school context by using data from TwinLife, a study with a representative sample of about 4,000 German twin families, while focusing on the sub-sample of school children in secondary education (N ≈ 1,300). Results of multilevel analyses indicated cross-sectional correlations between the personality factors neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness with the frequency of bullying experiences. Cross lagged modelling revealed no reciprocal longitudinal relationship between the investigated personality dimensions and the frequency of bullying experiences. This preregistration contains an extension of the already conducted phenotypic analyses. By using the twin design methods in a next step, new insights on the genetic contribution to the discussed cross-sectional effects can be drawn. Implications for personality development as well as implications for victimization research are discussed.

Under "Files - Research and analysis plan", you can find a detailed description of the research plan including relevant literature, research questions, measurements and planned analyses.

Previous work suggests that there is a link between shift work and health. Furthermore, shift work is assumed to affect health outcomes via the effect of health behavior. As the findings regarding the relationship between shift work and health-related behavior patterns are inconsistent and limited, the present study will examine this link with regard to potential moderators (namely, fluid intelligence, socio-economic status, and self-control) in a German sample. Subsequently, we will investigate the relationship between actual health behavior and subjective health. Due to diverging findings for men and women that are frequently found, we will analyze the data separately for the sexes.

Discrimination experiences are a common phenomenon that does not happen at random, but instead appear to be linked to individual characteristics and social identities. Accordingly, being a member of an ethnic minority groups tends to increase the risk of experiencing discrimination. But not all members of a minority group report discrimination and not all individuals experiencing negative behavior against them regard this behavior as discrimination. There is either variation in a) the probability to become affected by unjust treatment, b) interpreting experiences of unjust treatment as discrimination, c) reporting perceived discrimination experiences, or d) a combination of the above. Evidence exists that each process, ultimately leading to the reporting of discrimination experiences, may depend on external (e.g, belonging to a social group, appearance or social behavior) and/or internal factors (e.g, personality, attribution styles). Despite the fact that the empirical literature offers a broad variety of potential variables that can ultimately lead to the perception of discrimination, such variables are seldom contrasted and potential confounds are not conclusively controlled for. Especially for controlling confounds, twin studies seem ideal: Twins, as a natural experiment, are matched for a number of variables, which potentially serve as reason to be discriminated against. In conclusion, the first aim of the study is to test, to what extend reports of discrimination depend on physical features or on other more obviously perceivable behavior (in the following called incident related features) and individual personality-like constructs (in the following called attribution related features) in a twin based sample, while taking multiple variables into account simultaneously. To explore the potential underlying mechanisms of discrimination experiences and attributions, the second aim of the study is to test whether variations of reports between twins will be mostly driven by twin’s differences in variables of the two aforementioned categories of variables (some variables increase either likelihood of an insult or the likelihood of attribution to the social belonging). To address these aims, secondary data analyses on the TwinLife data will be performed.

Social exclusion is not a circumstance that only one person suffers from, but rather the whole family can be affected. The family stress model (Conger & Elder, 1994) offers a framework to understand how stressors affect family processes and climate. According to the model, stressors (originally limited to economic pressure) lead to a cascade of parental behavior changes that finally lead to offspring adjustment problems. It has been argued that this model is not just applicable to economic stressors but should also be applicable to a variety of potential stressors. So, the current study aims to investigate via structural equation modelling whether the family stress model is applicable to social exclusion events in terms of whether perceived discrimination affects offspring adjustment problems, such as deviance, through parental distress and disrupted parenting. In addition, we will test the temporal sequence of behavioral changes and whether fathers and mothers contribute differently to the development of offspring adjustment problems in reaction to social exclusion events. Data of about 2.000 families is drawn from the German TwinLife panel study. If social exclusion events lead to a similar cascade of behavior changes, this may provide vital hints for a more generalized model of how stressors affect family dynamics and offspring adjustment problems. A suitable model for explaining the effects of social exclusion on families may have important practical implications to plan specific interventions.

Almost everyone experiences rejection or exclusion from time to time. These experiences are part of human coexistence, but people differ in how often they experience them and how they react to them. Recent studies have shown that these incidents may not happen at random, as personality may play an incremental role in explaining who gets targeted by social exclusion experiences (see e.g., Cawvey et al. 2018). Also, there are studies that show that causal attributions can have different consequences for individuals affected, such as attributing events to discrimination can also have positive effects for self-esteem (e.g. Thijs & Piscoi, 2016). However, to investigate whether causal attributions or occurrences of social exclusion events differ with certain personality trait, prior studies had shortcomings as they often intermingle both the occurrence of social exclusion and the causal attribution (“Have you been discriminated against?”) or nudge the causal attribution (“Were you excluded due to your origin?”). In this study, we try to distinguish strictly between the occurrence of social exclusion events and the related attribution, so that we can answer the following questions conclusively: Do some personality traits increase the probability to experience social exclusion events? Or do they change the person’s attributional style which ultimately leads to effects ascribed as discrimination although the event itself could also be interpreted differently? Also, in this project, it should be elaborated, how these processes affect indicators of subjective well-being. One model that may be useful in the explanation of variations in individual reactions to social exclusion in the short or long term is Richman and Leary’s multi-motive model (2009). When it comes to specific encounters of social rejection events, it also implies that these processes ultimately lead to stable and long-lasting outcomes, such as poorer health. So, another goal of this project is to assess, whether some proposed assumptions of the multi-motive model hold, when investigating these assumptions with survey based data.

Differences in educational trajectories in general and in particular school performances between children within and between different social classes, and thus the persisting educational inequalities, can only be partially explained by differences in the most studied factor - children's cognitive abilities (Arnold et al., 2007; Paulus et al., 2021; von Stumm, 2017). Therefore, it is important to examine additional constructs that might help to understand the emergence and perpetuation of educational inequalities. Based on previous research, these factors could include academic intrinsic motivation (Taylor et al., 2014), self-control (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005), or the quality of home environment (Hanscombe, Haworth, Davis, Jaffee, & Plomin, 2011). The aim of the present study is to consider additional constructs in a collective fashion to specify their potential unique as well as joint contributions, and to identify associated mechanisms (mediation, moderation) underlying the question how SES influences educational trajectories and contributes to educational inequalities.

In light of the recent worldwide migration of refugees, determinants of a more or less successful integration are heavily discussed, but reliable empirical investigations are scarce and have often focused on sociodemographic factors. In the present study, we explore the role of several individual characteristics for refugee adjustment in the areas of (a) institutional, (b) interpersonal and (c) intrapersonal adaptation. In a sample of 4,527 refugees (M = 33.6 years, 38% women), we investigated the effect of sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, months in Germany, religious affiliation), cognitive factors (cognitive ability, educational history, language skills, integration-course participation), and personality (locus of control, risk appetite, willingness to reciprocity) on adjustment parameters. Both, cognitive skills (especially language skills) and personality, showed incremental validity beyond sociodemographic factors for refugee adjustment comparable across contextual factors. Even with respect to contextual factors such as residency status and living situation, results remained largely stable. The study provides first hints on the importance of personality, thereby providing important implications for understanding integration processes and optimizing interventions on personal, social, and societal levels.