Educational identity has been studied increasingly in the past decades since school is a structured context that shapes adolescent identity formation. Across the academic years, adolescents learn to position themselves in terms of their education and schooling, perceiving these entities as more or less relevant for their self-formation. In this…

This four-wave longitudinal study among 698 Chinese early adolescents explored (1) how personal identity coherence and confusion develop; and (2) whether parenting style and peer relationships (i.e., close friend relationships and peer preference) were related to personal identity development. Participants (M[subscript age] = 11.39 yrs.,…

Despite ample research on empathy development, its social origins have been understudied, particularly in the context of peer relations. This two-wave study of Swedish adolescents (N = 318; M[subscript ageT1] = 16.28, SD = 0.49; 55% females) examined longitudinal associations between youth friendships and empathy. The results showed that…

Empathy and executive functions (EFs) are multimodal constructs that enable individuals to cope with their environment. Both abilities develop throughout childhood and are known to contribute to social behavior and academic performance in young adolescents. Notably, mentalizing and EF activate shared frontotemporal brain areas, which in previous…

The impact of social media on teens' mental health and development raises the need for educational interventions that equip them with the knowledge and skills to cope with dangerous situations. In spite of the growing effort to expand social media literacy among youngsters, social media interventions still rely on conventional methods that tend to…

The theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to understand mental states in others. The previous research has highlighted age- and language-dependent effects during childhood and provided inconsistent data regarding the role of gender. Notably, these variables were rarely studied simultaneously among adolescents. Accordingly, this short longitudinal…

Background: Despite extensive research examining features of adolescents' ego-identity development, little research has demonstrated patterns of ego-identity development and its relationship with various individual and environmental factors that are theoretically important for identity development. Objective: The current study investigated…

Complexity is one of the major demands of adolescents' future life as adults. To investigate adolescents' competence development in applying problem-solving strategies in complex environments, we conducted a 2-wave longitudinal study in a sample of Finnish adolescents (11-17 years old; N = 1,959 at Time 1 and N = 1,690 at Time 2, 3 years later).…

Although Bowlby proposed that adolescence is a major developmental period to transfer their attachment figures from parents to other people, no comprehensive longitudinal study on attachment transfer from early to late adolescence exists. This study employed 215 early to late adolescents between ages 11 and 18 years (X-bar[subscript age] = 14.02,…

In this study, we explored the longitudinal linkages among Chinese early adolescents' unsociability, peer rejection, and loneliness. Participants were N = 445 primary school students in Shanghai, P.R. China followed over 3 years from Grades 6 and 7 to Grades 8 and 9. Measures of adolescents' unsociability, peer rejection, and loneliness were…

We used latent growth curve analysis to extend research on associations between early puberty and adverse peer relations by examining the role of pubertal timing in the developmental trajectories of peer victimization and offending from early- to mid-adolescence. We made use of three-wave longitudinal data collected annually from a cohort of…

Family factors and adolescent life satisfaction have profound effects on later behavior. The present study examined the effects of family cohesion and life satisfaction on internalizing (depression and self-esteem) and externalizing (deviance) outcomes among adolescents. Moreover, this study also viewed internalizing outcomes as conduits that…

Adolescence is important for the development of achievement motivation, including achievement goal pursuit. Longitudinal research is scarce on adolescents' goal development and its implications for academic outcomes. In our research, we first present a systematic review of findings on achievement goals in adolescence. Then we report 2 longitudinal…

This study examined associations between perceived popularity trajectories and changes in proactive and reactive aggression in middle adolescence. The sample included 1,374 adolescents from 5 cohorts who were followed from Grade 7 to Grade 9 (49% males, M[subscript age] = 12.67 years, SD = 0.67). Popularity trajectories were identified based on…

Self-esteem has always been a hot research object in the field of adolescent mental health. But in longitudinal research, using a single slope to describe the trajectory of adolescent self-esteem is unrealistic. The piecewise growth mixture model (PGMM) was used to fit the data in this study. Selecting from China Family Panel Studies database, a…