This study examined, first, the longitudinal interplay between immigrant youth's acculturation into the host and ethnic cultures and perceived ethnic discrimination, and, second, whether acceptance ...and rejection by immigrant and non-immigrant peers longitudinally mediated the link between acculturation and discrimination. 1057 students nested in 49 Greek middle-school classrooms took part in the study (Wave 1; age M = 12.7 years). 532 immigrants provided the acculturation and discrimination data. Together with their 525 Greek classmates, they also provided peer nomination data. Immigrant youth's higher acculturation into the host culture predicted over time decreases in perceived ethnic discrimination. Furthermore, this link was longitudinally mediated by acceptance by Greek peers. The reverse path from perceived ethnic discrimination to acculturation into the Greek culture was not significant. The results suggest that to promote immigrant youth positive adaptation, interventions need to support their acculturation and intergroup contact.
Immigrant youth differ in their adaptation, which is judged on the basis of how well they deal with developmental and acculturative tasks. While immigrant adolescents are faced with the realities of ...2 different cultures, they also have to master age-salient tasks, such as self-efficacy and identity development. To get a better insight into the interplay of developmental and acculturative tasks and their relationship with family functioning, we used 3-wave longitudinal data over a 2-year period from 13-year-old immigrant students (N = 609) in Athens, Greece. Cross-lagged models revealed that family functioning and acculturation were resources for the mastery of developmental tasks. Involvement in the host culture prospectively predicted self-efficacy beliefs, and involvement in the ethnic culture prospectively predicted ethnic identity. These effects increased over time. Family functioning prospectively predicted self-efficacy and ethnic identity. These effects decreased over time. The findings suggest that a well-functioning family, for early adolescents, and being involved in the host culture and in ethnic cultures, for middle adolescents, are particularly important resources to master the tasks of their developmental period. Our findings underscore the importance of developmentally sensitive approaches and the need to account for acculturative challenges in order to understand individual differences in immigrant youth adaptation.
School engagement trajectories of immigrant youth Motti-Stefanidi, Frosso; Masten, Ann; Asendorpf, Jens B.
International journal of behavioral development,
01/2015, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We examined behavioral school engagement trajectories of immigrant and non-immigrant early adolescents in relation to their academic achievement. Data were based on teacher judgments and school ...records. Students from immigrant families living in Greece and their non-immigrant classmates (N = 1057) were assessed over the three years of middle school (ages 13 to 15). Academic achievement influenced later school engagement more strongly than vice versa for both immigrant and non-immigrant students. Low achievement, being an immigrant student and social adversity were found to be risk factors for the initial level of behavioral engagement. An overall increase in students’ absenteeism over the course of the study was stronger for immigrant students. The immigrant status effect was due to immigrant students’ lower achievement. The results suggest that immigrant youth may disengage from school to protect themselves from academic failure. This would also be a plausible explanation for earlier findings that immigrant and non-immigrant students do not differ in psychological well-being, even though immigrant students have significantly lower academic achievement. Implications for interventions to promote academic achievement and to prevent disengagement in immigrant students are discussed.
Although numerous studies have emphasized the role evaluations by others play for people's self-esteem, the perspective of others and the social diversity of real-life contexts have largely been ...ignored. In a large-scale longitudinal study, we examined the link between adolescents' self-esteem and their self- and peer-perceived popularity in socially diverse classrooms. First, we tested the competing directions of effects predicted by sociometer theory (i.e., peer-perceived popularity affects self-esteem, mediated by self-perceived popularity) and the self-broadcasting perspective (i.e., self-esteem affects peer-perceived popularity). Second, we examined differential effects of popularity in the own social group ("us") versus others ("them") by using immigrant status groups (i.e., immigrants versus host-nationals). We examined 1,057 13-year-old students in 3 annual waves. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that popularity among peers of the in-group but not among peers of the out-group prospectively predicted self-esteem, which was mediated by self-perceived popularity. Self-esteem in turn prospectively predicted self- but not peer-perceived popularity. In sum, the findings provide support for sociometer theory and a conscious sociometer mechanism but no support for the self-broadcasting perspective. The findings further demonstrate that the sociometer was more responsive to popularity in immigrant status in- than out-groups. In conclusion, the findings underscore the need to consider the perspective of others and their social group memberships to better understand the complexities of the link between self-esteem and popularity. web URL: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/110/6/908/
In August of 2021, China imposed severe restrictions on children’s online gaming time. We argue that such a policy may seem useful on the surface but does not reflect the current evidence concerning ...prevention of disordered gaming. Videogame play is normal for children worldwide, and like other leisure activities can lead to benefits for the majority and problems for a minority. Problematic or disordered play results from the interaction of multiple risk factors that are not addressed by draconian policy measures. Identifying these factors through stakeholder-engaged research and current evidence will be much more likely to succeed in preventing disordered gaming and promoting youth wellbeing.
A global challenge for developmental psychology is to better understand how young people around the world make sense of their identities growing up in pluralistic societies. The study of ...ethnic-racial identity provides an important lens for this process. This paper describes how five European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) adapted the Identity Project, an 8-week school-based intervention originally developed in the United States to promote adolescents' ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution. Across the five countries, deep structure adaptations included revised or added content regarding key terminology used, a focus on migration and foreignness rather than 'race,' and discussions regarding national and regional identities, in addition to ethnic-racial identities, and how they may relate to one another. The process and content of adaptation we describe addresses two fundamental issues relevant to a globalized developmental psychology: 1) contributing to theoretical advances on key aspects of development by taking sociohistorical context seriously, and 2) moving between etic and emic perspectives to arrive at psychological constructs that can be appropriately studied across diverse cultural contexts.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how individual differences
contribute to the translation of perceived group discrimination into perceived
personal discrimination. One hundred ...forty-five Pontic Greek and 269 Albanian
students (mean age 12.9 years) enrolled in Greek urban public schools were
assessed in Grade 1 of high school. Albanians reported higher discrimination
against their ethnic group, but not higher discrimination against themselves,
personally, than Pontic Greeks. Personal discrimination could be predicted by
perceived group discrimination as well as from individual characteristics of
immigrant students, independently of their ethnicity. Furthermore, when students
reported high, but not low, group discrimination, many of their individual
characteristics were shown to buffer against translating perceived group
discrimination into experiences of personal discrimination. These results
highlight the importance of individual differences, in addition to perceptions
of group discrimination, for feelings of being discriminated against as an
individual and suggest that high group discrimination of immigrants,
independently of ethnic background, does not necessarily result in high personal
discrimination, if individual protective factors are present.
Despite research showing that immigrant adolescents differ in the degree to which they feel personally discriminated against, little is known about individual predictors of their perceived personal ...discrimination. We studied the role of a major developmental task in adolescence that is highly relevant for discrimination experiences: being liked by peers. We followed N = 532 13-year old immigrant students (n = 294 boys) in Greek high schools over 2 years to examine longitudinal links between personal ethnic discrimination and social preference among host-national and immigrant classmates. We applied a sociometric method to asses peer preference and we assessed self-perceived preference. Cross-lagged models revealed that preference among host-national peers but not by immigrant peers predicted low personal ethnic discrimination beyond self-perceptions of preference and group ethnic discrimination. Group ethnic discrimination moderated the effect of preference among host-national peers on low personal ethnic discrimination. Peer preference, in turn, did not feed back on personal ethnic discrimination. Findings highlight the importance of being liked by host-national classmates for immigrant adolescents: it can prevent feelings of being personally discriminated against, even if they perceive their group to be discriminated against.
The experiences in close relationships revised (ECR-R) is widely used to assess romantic attachment dimensions. Investigating cultural limitations in its applicability is imperative. This study aims ...to examine the instrument's: (1) factor structure in two large and normative samples of Greek (N = 1706, M
age
= 16.16; SD = 2.16; 49.7% male) and Cypriot (N = 1279; M
age
= 15.54; SD = 0.65; 44.9% male) adolescents; (2) measurement invariance between these groups, accounting for potential gender and age effects. Results supported the two-factor structure and indicated partial invariance of the constructs between Greek and Cypriot adolescents. Findings support limitations in the use of instruments adapted for Greece in Cyprus.
Is fundamentalism universal across religious cultures? We investigated this issue by focusing on 3 questions: (a) the dimensionality of fundamentalism, as measured by the Religious Fundamentalism ...Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004); (b) the very nature of fundamentalism as denoting dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, or strong groupness; and (c) interreligious prejudice as predicted uniquely, additively, or interactively by religiousness and sociocognitive rigidity. We collected data from 14 countries of Catholic, Protestant, Christian Orthodox, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim tradition, regrouped in 7 cultural-religious zones (N = 3,218 young adults). We measured fundamentalism, the 4 dimensions of religiousness (believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging), authoritarianism, existential quest, and interreligious prejudice-negative and discriminatory attitudes toward various religious outgroups and atheists. Across religious cultures, we found that: (a) the scale is unidimensional; (b) fundamentalism is best conceptualized as a combination of dogmatic belief (believing and low existential quest) and moral rigorism (behaving and authoritarianism) and occasionally as strong groupness (belonging and authoritarianism); (c) religious dimensions, additively to and interactively with, authoritarianism and low existential quest predict interreligious prejudice (in monotheistic cultures); and (d) anti-Muslim attitudes were the highest, but fundamentalism and religiousness related most strongly to antiatheist sentiments.
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