Adolescents are tasked with navigating competing priorities, including whether to marry, have children, pursue a job/career, go to college, and contribute to society. The developmental task of building expectations for the future is especially complex for Cambodian adolescents living within a society that strongly prioritizes family obligations…

Perceived racial discrimination (PRD) has been documented as a risk factor for worse psychological well-being among African Americans. Yet, most researchers have not examined how trajectories of PRD during emerging adulthood shape psychological well-being in adulthood. Moreover, less is known about whether demographic factors and components of…

Developmental studies have consistently argued for consideration of contextual influences on children's socioemotional well-being. This is particularly true among children of immigrants, who have highly diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten, this study disentangled the…

Life Span psychological and life course sociological perspectives have long acknowledged that individual functioning is shaped by historical and sociocultural contexts. Secular increases favoring later-born cohorts are widely documented for fluid cognitive performance and well-being (among older adults). However, little is known about secular…

The aim of this study was to test a model of emotional distress, which incorporates the potential mediator role of positive resources (sense of control, self-esteem, and optimism) in the association of age with emotional distress. The study used a cross-sectional design with intentional sampling and the voluntary participation of 325 adults…

This research presented 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds (N = 120) with hypothetical situations depicting comparably aged children engaging in defiance and deception to circumvent authorities' directives that they disagreed with. The nature of the situations varied in terms of domain (personal, moral, or prudential) and type of authority figure (parent…

General well-being is known to deteriorate sharply at the end of life. However, it is an open question how rates of terminal change differ across affective and evaluative facets of well-being and if individual difference correlates operate in facet-specific ways. We examined how discrete affective states (happy, angry, fearful, sad) and…

This study examined trajectories of perceived control and their association with parents' education and personal educational experience (educational attainment and years of full-time postsecondary education) in 971 Canadian high school seniors tracked 7 times across 25 years. Latent growth models showed that, on average, perceived control…

Sense of control is greater among children who grow up in households of higher socioeconomic status. It is unclear if this childhood advantage persists throughout life or if schooling and adulthood experiences override any early childhood advantage. Using data from 2 nationally representative samples of primarily middle-aged (National Survey of…

Perceived control is interrelated with aging-related outcomes across adulthood and old age. Relatively little is known, however, about resources as antecedents of longitudinal change in perceived control and the role of perceived control as a buffer against mortality risk when these resources are low. We examined functional limitations, depressive…

Perceived control plays an important role for health across adulthood and old age. However, little is known about the factors that account for such associations and whether changes in control (or control trajectory) uniquely predict major health outcomes over and above mean levels of control. Using data from the nationwide Americans' Changing…

Children often overestimate their contribution to collaborative activities. Across 2 studies, the authors investigated whether this memory bias supports internalization of the actions of others in the context of joint exchanges. After taking turns with (high collaborative condition; Studies 1 and 2) or working independently of (low collaborative…

The effects of extent and kind of external control during training on later resistance to temptation were examined in preschool children. Boys transgressed significantly more quickly than girls. (ST)

Subjects who reported that their parents used more punishing- and controlling-type behaviors were found to have greater expectations of control by powerful others, while subjects who viewed their parents as using unpredictable standards had stronger chance orientations. (ST)

This study examined the relations between attitudes and cognitive functioning in 950 Israeli seventh grade students. In the lowest socioeconomic group, locus of control was the most potent attitude variable while in the higher socioeconomic groups, self-concept and aspirations were most strongly associated with cognitive functioning. (JMB)