While overt instances of harassment and violence towards LGBQ+ individuals have decreased in recent years, subtler forms of heterosexism still shape the social and academic experience of students in ...higher education contexts. Such forms, defined as microaggressions, frequently include environmental slights that communicate hostile and derogatory messages about one's sexual-minority status. However, there is some evidence suggesting that environmental microaggressions have deleterious effects on all students, regardless of their sexual orientation. The aim of the current study was to examine how heterosexist environmental microaggressions on campus contributed to heterosexual and non-heterosexual students' negative perceptions of campus climate. We also analyzed whether the effect of microaggressions on campus climate was mediated by student social integration on campus. Data were collected in 2018 through an anonymous web-based survey that involved students from a large university of Southern Italy. The sample consisted of 471 students from 18 to 33 years old. Thirty-eight (8.1%) students self-identified as non-heterosexual. Measures included self-reported experiences of environmental microaggressions on campus, student degree of satisfaction with peer-group and student-faculty interactions, perceptions of faculty concern for student development, and of the overall campus climate. The structural equation model showed that heterosexist environmental microaggressions on campus were associated with negative perceptions of campus climate through lowered satisfaction with peer-group interactions and perceptions of faculty concern for student development, for both heterosexual and non-heterosexual students. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that heterosexist microaggressions within campus environments are negatively associated with students' perceptions of campus climate, regardless of their sexual orientation. Both faculty and peers play an important role in creating an environment that supports the inclusivity of diversity and fosters a greater sense of belonging to the campus community.
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the emotional well-being of adolescents worldwide. Some studies suggested that individuals with high Environmental Sensitivity may have been ...more likely to experience poor psychological adjustment during the pandemic than those with lower sensitivity. However, there is still limited research on how emotional responses varied across different stages of the pandemic and whether Environmental Sensitivity increased adolescents’ vulnerability to the psychological impact of prolonged pandemic restrictions. Methods To address this gap, this study used a three-year longitudinal design (2020–2022) with a sample of 453 adolescents. They completed an online survey measuring their positive and negative emotions throughout the pandemic period, with Environmental Sensitivity considered a time-invariant covariate. Results The results revealed that all participants, regardless of their level of Environmental Sensitivity, experienced a decrease in positive emotionality between the first and second years. However, this trend reversed, showing an increase between the second and third years. Regarding negative emotions, highly sensitive adolescents experienced a significant linear increase over time. In contrast, low-and medium-sensitive adolescents exhibited a quadratic trend, with a notable increase in negative emotions between the first and second years, followed by a slight decrease between the second and third years. Discussion These findings provide further evidence of the negative impact of the pandemic on adolescents’ emotional well-being. They also support the notion that Environmental Sensitivity is associated with individuals’ ability to respond and adjust to adverse life events, with significant implications for future research and practice.
Introduction
Schools are among the most homophobic social contexts, where students who do not conform to gender norms are at high risk of stigma and discrimination.
Method
Using a multilevel ...approach, the aim of the current was to examine whether adolescents’ engagement in homophobic bullying behavior was associated with personal values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions at individual level, and perceptions of school as a community and frequency of teachers’ reaction to bullying incidents at classroom level. Data were collected in 2010. The sample consisted of 2718 Italian middle and high school students (53.2% females; mean age = 15.36,
SD
= .85) from 144 classrooms.
Results
Results showed that self-transcendence values reduced the risk of engaging in homophobic bullying, whereas both self-enhancement values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions were positively associated with homophobic bullying. At classroom level, only negative perceptions of school as a community had a unique positive contribution on homophobic bullying, over and above other individual and contextual factors. Two cross-level interactions were found, indicating that self-transcendence values had a significant effect in decreasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as low, whereas stereotyped victim-blaming attributions had a significant effect in increasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as high.
Conclusion
These findings provide further support to the social-ecological perspective as a useful guiding framework for understanding the complexity of factors predicting homophobic bullying.
Policy Implications
Efforts should be made to develop clear anti-bullying school policies explicitly dealing with the issue of homophobic bullying.
To examine whether the cultural normativeness of parents' beliefs and behaviors moderates the links between those beliefs and behaviors and youths' adjustment, mothers, fathers, and children (N = ...1,298 families) from 12 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) were interviewed when children were, on average, 10 years old and again when children were 12 years old. Multilevel models examined 5 aspects of parenting (expectations regarding family obligations, monitoring, psychological control, behavioral control, warmth/affection) in relation to 5 aspects of youth adjustment (social competence, prosocial behavior, academic achievement, externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior). Interactions between family level and culture-level predictors were tested to examine whether cultural normativeness of parenting behaviors moderated the link between those behaviors and children's adjustment. More evidence was found for within- than between-culture differences in parenting predictors of youth adjustment. In 7 of the 8 instances in which cultural normativeness was found to moderate the link between parenting and youth adjustment, the link between a particular parenting behavior and youth adjustment was magnified in cultural contexts in which the parenting behavior was more normative.
According to the Pathologic Adaptation Model of community violence exposure, repeated experiences of violence within the community lead youth to accept violence as a normative and legitimate strategy ...to cope with conflict, thus increasing their involvement in aggressive behaviors. This hypothesis has been under-investigated with reference to bullying at school. Using a person-centered analytical approach (latent profile analysis), this study examines the mediating role of moral disengagement as a type of normalizing cognition about violence, in the relationship between profiles of community violence exposure and perpetration of bullying. Eight hundred and two adolescents (11–18 years; 43.4% girls) from two different urban and societal contexts in Italy (Milan vs. Naples) participated in the study. Four profiles of exposure to community violence emerged. Context site and age influenced belonging to the four profiles. Being moderately exposed to violence, both as a victim and as a witness, was significantly associated with higher levels of moral disengagement and bullying perpetration. Being exposed as a witness and as a victim, and being exposed only as a witness were associated with bullying perpetration via the increase of moral disengagement. These findings support the Pathologic Adaptation Model and indicate that adolescents who experience higher levels of community violence, as a witness or both as a witness and a victim, are more likely to develop morally disengaged beliefs about violence, which in turn would increase the likelihood to perpetrate bullying. Results are also discussed in the context of social diversity.
Background
Research supports the beneficial role of prosocial behaviors on children's adjustment and successful youth development. Empirical studies point to reciprocal relations between negative ...parenting and children's maladjustment, but reciprocal relations between positive parenting and children's prosocial behavior are understudied. In this study reciprocal relations between two different dimensions of positive parenting (quality of the mother–child relationship and the use of balanced positive discipline) and children's prosocial behavior were examined in Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States.
Methods
Mother–child dyads (N = 1105) provided data over 2 years in two waves (Mage of child in wave 1 = 9.31 years, SD = 0.73; 50% female).
Results
A model of reciprocal relations between parenting dimensions, but not among parenting and children's prosocial behavior, emerged. In particular, children with higher levels of prosocial behavior at age 9 elicited higher levels of mother–child relationship quality in the following year.
Conclusions
Findings yielded similar relations across countries, evidencing that being prosocial in late childhood contributes to some degree to the enhancement of a nurturing and involved mother–child relationship in countries that vary widely on sociodemographic profiles and psychological characteristics. Policy and intervention implications of this study are discussed.
Parental self-efficacy (PSE) captures parents' beliefs in their ability to perform the parenting role successfully and to handle pivotal issues of specific developmental periods. Although previous ...studies have shown that, across the transition to adolescence, parents show decreasing levels of PSE while adolescents exhibit increasing engagement in rule-breaking (RB) behaviors, there is a paucity of studies investigating whether and how changes in PSE are related to late adolescents' RB behaviors across development. The present study examined the developmental trends of PSE among Italian mothers and fathers over seven waves (representing children's transition from late childhood to late adolescence; approximately from 9 to 18 years old) as well as the longitudinal associations between PSE and RB behaviors during late adolescence. Data were drawn from seven waves of the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) project, a large-scale longitudinal, cross-cultural study, and included 200 Italian children (MAgeAtTime1 = 9.80, SD = 0.65; 50.5% girls) and their parents (200 mothers; 190 fathers). PSE was measured across all seven time-points (from T1 to T7), while adolescents' RB behaviors were measured at the first and last assessment (T1 and T7). Results of univariate latent growth models showed a cubic trend of mothers' PSE, which revealed a decreasing pattern characterized initially by a slight decline, followed by a rebound before continuously decreasing. By contrast, fathers' PSE followed a linear decrease over time. Finally, our findings evidenced that only the slope of mothers' PSE negatively predicted adolescents' RB behaviors at T7, implying that mothers who maintained higher levels of PSE over time had children who later engaged in lower RB behaviors. The study implications are discussed.
We tested a model that childrenâs tendency to attribute hostile intent to others in response to provocation is a key psychological process that statistically accounts for individual differences in ...reactive aggressive behavior and that this mechanism contributes to global group differences in childrenâs chronic aggressive behavior problems. Participants were 1,299 children (mean age at year 1 = 8.3 y; 51% girls) from 12 diverse ecological-context groups in nine countries worldwide, followed across 4 y. In year 3, each child was presented with each of 10 hypothetical vignettes depicting an ambiguous provocation toward the child and was asked to attribute the likely intent of the provocateur (coded as benign or hostile) and to predict his or her own behavioral response (coded as nonaggression or reactive aggression). Mothers and children independently rated the childâs chronic aggressive behavior problems in years 2, 3, and 4. In every ecological group, in those situations in which a child attributed hostile intent to a peer, that child was more likely to report that he or she would respond with reactive aggression than in situations when that same child attributed benign intent. Across children, hostile attributional bias scores predicted higher mother- and child-rated chronic aggressive behavior problems, even controlling for prior aggression. Ecological group differences in the tendency for children to attribute hostile intent statistically accounted for a significant portion of group differences in chronic aggressive behavior problems. The findings suggest a psychological mechanism for group differences in aggressive behavior and point to potential interventions to reduce aggressive behavior.
Interpersonal conflict and violence occur within and between groups around the world. Although not proving causation, this study is significant because it suggests a key psychological mechanism in childrenâs chronic aggression that might be targeted for intervention: oneâs attribution that a peer is acting with hostile intent. When children attribute hostile intent to peers, they are more likely to predict they would react aggressively than when they attribute benign intent. Differences in this tendency statistically account for differences in future chronic aggressive behavior problems across children, as well as differences in chronic aggressive behavior problem rates across ecological-context groups. Identifying this mechanism could lead to novel interventions, education, and policies that reduce or prevent aggressive behavior.
We investigated the effects of parental warmth and behavioral control on externalizing and internalizing symptom trajectories from ages 8 to 14 in 1,298 adolescents from 12 cultural groups. We did ...not find that single universal trajectories characterized adolescent externalizing and internalizing symptoms across cultures, but instead found significant heterogeneity in starting points and rates of change in both externalizing and internalizing symptoms across cultures. Some similarities did emerge. Across many cultural groups, internalizing symptoms decreased from ages 8 to 10, and externalizing symptoms increased from ages 10 to 14. Parental warmth appears to function similarly in many cultures as a protective factor that prevents the onset and growth of adolescent externalizing and internalizing symptoms, whereas the effects of behavioral control vary from culture to culture.
Framed within the evolutionary framework, the Interpersonal Motivational System (IMS) theory suggests that eight distinct motivational impulses drive interpersonal human relationships, namely ...caregiving, social affiliation, attachment, rank-dominance, rank-submission, social play, cooperation, and sexuality. This theory has been widely applied in clinical practice, where psychopathology is viewed as the result of non-flexible or excessive activation of one system over another. Despite its clinical relevance, empirical studies aimed at measuring IMSs are scarce. This paper contributed to filling this gap by proposing a questionnaire to measure individuals’ activation of the eight IMSs. Two studies involving large samples of adults were conducted. The first study (N = 455; 76.5% females) concerned the development of the questionnaire and examination of its content validity through explorative factor analysis. In the second study (N = 635; 54.8% females), confirmatory factor analyses were performed to further refine and confirm the instrument’s factor structure. The final version consisted of 50 items. Empirical validity was established by investigating the correlations between the eight IMSs and other related measures (i.e., personality traits, human basic values, and attachment dimensions). The findings suggest that the IMS framework can be used to understand individual differences in motivation and behavior in different social contexts.
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