Changes in personality traits in late adolescence and young adulthood are believed to co-occur with changes in identity, but little research is available that supports this hypothesis. The present study addressed this relatively understudied area of research by examining longitudinal associations of Big Five personality traits (i.e., Neuroticism,…

Based on current theories of depression, reciprocal links between loneliness and depressive symptoms are expected to occur. However, longitudinal studies on adolescent samples are scarce and have yielded conflicting results. The present five-wave longitudinal study from mid- to late adolescence (N = 428, M age at T1 = 15.22 years; 47% female)…

Through the theoretical lens of the self-presentation model, this paper addresses conflicting results from past research on the links between the components of diffidence (i.e., high levels of introversion and loneliness, and low levels of self-esteem) and alcohol use among undergraduate college students (N = 548). Correlational and multiple…

This investigation addressed the question of how two forms of social cognitive reasoning--epistemic reasoning and adolescent egocentrism--interface with externalizing and internalizing forms of psychopathology during adolescence. Adolescents' epistemic reasoning (i.e., types of belief entitlement, or degree of doubt, held by an individual when…

Crisis and vulnerability in adolescent development were investigated by focusing on different self-concept dimensions and the relationships between them and between other personality factors. One study involving 5,976 elementary and secondary school and one study involving 701 secondary school students in Hong Kong indicated changing self-concepts…