Prior theoretical and empirical research has highlighted links between positive parenting and the socioeconomic characteristics of the family's neighborhood, but has yet to illuminate the etiologic origins of this association. One possibility is that the various predictors of parenting outlined by Belsky (1984; e.g., characteristics of the child,…

Children's socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to disparate access to resources and affects social behaviors such as inclusion and resource allocations. Yet it is unclear whether children's essentialized view of SES (i.e., believing SES is immutable) or subjective social status (SSS) influences behavioral biases toward high- versus low-SES peers.…

Psychological attitudes about social status hierarchies and social mobility often reflect stereotypic expectations about competencies and entitlements based on inequalities. Children who experience exclusion based on social class are at risk of experiencing a lack of opportunities, contributing to societal disparities. Recently, developmental…

Personality variables are associated with educational attainment and socioeconomic outcomes. In this study we incorporated a polygenic score derived from the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment to date (Lee et al., 2018) into the Interactionist Model of R. D. Conger, Martin, and Masarik (2021) that describes the…

Multiple studies have shown that children conform to majorities in perceptual judgment tasks against their better knowledge. However, these studies report contradictory results about how conformity develops over age. Here, we study variation in conformity over the course of middle childhood: we examined potential informational and normative…

Building on recommendations from several of the articles in the special section on conscientiousness in the June 2014 issue of "Developmental Psychology," the present study tested predictions from the interactionist model (IM) of socioeconomic influences on individual development. In an approach consistent with the idea of cumulative…

Hispanic adolescents have high expectations for their own educational attainment, but educational attainment outcomes for Hispanic young adults are relatively low on average. Limited scholarship links Hispanic adolescents' educational expectations with attainment in adulthood. Using a longitudinal within-group approach, the authors examined…

We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.44 years (52%…

The current study investigated the role of theory of mind development in school readiness among 120 low-income preschool and kindergarten children. A short-term longitudinal design was used to examine relations among theory of mind, the understanding of teaching, and learning behaviors and their collective role in children's literacy and numeracy…

Older adults report being more trusting than young adults, and this may be particularly evident in close social relationships. This is beneficial for well-being when trust is reciprocated, but detrimental when trust is exploited. In a repeated trust game, young (n = 35) and older adults (n = 33) invested real money over repeated interactions with…

Drawing from a relational developmental systems (RDS) perspective (Lerner, Agans, DeSouza, & Gasca, 2013) and data from 1,427 continuously partnered young adult and midlife mixed-sex couples over the first 5 years of the German Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam), this study examined the developmental course…

The present study examined the early parenting and temperament determinants of children's antisocial and positive behaviors in a low-income, diverse ethno-racial sample. Participants were from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, which included 960 European American (initial M age = 15.00 months; 51.2% female) and 880 African…

This article examines associations between the Great Recession and 4 aspects of 9-year olds' behavior--aggression (externalizing), anxiety/depression (internalizing), alcohol and drug use, and vandalism-using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort drawn from 20 U.S. cities (21% White, 50% Black, 26% Hispanic,…

Youth who experience adverse environments in early life initiate sexual activity at a younger age, on average, than those from more advantaged circumstances. Evolutionary theorists have posited that ecological stress precipitates earlier reproductive and sexual onset, but it is unclear how stressful environments interact with genetic influences on…

Prior research has found that higher residential mobility is associated with increased risk for children's academic and behavioral difficulty. In contrast, evaluations of experimental housing mobility interventions have shown moving from high poverty to low poverty neighborhoods to be beneficial for children's outcomes. This study merges these…