Reciprocal Relations across Time between Basic Values and Value‐expressive Behaviors: A Longitudinal Study among Children

The current study examines the reciprocal relations between children's values and value‐expressive behavior over a sixth‐month period. Three hundred and ten sixth‐grade students in Italy completed value and value‐expressive behavior questionnaires three times in three‐month intervals during the scholastic year. We assessed Schwartz's (1992) higher‐order values of conservation, openness to change, self‐enhancement, and self‐transcendence, as well as their respective expressive behaviors. Reciprocal relations over time between values and behaviors were examined using a cross‐lagged longitudinal design. Results showed that values and behaviors had reciprocal longitudinal effects on one another, after the stability of the variables was taken into account (i.e., values predicted change in behaviors, but also behaviors predicted change in values). Our findings also revealed that: (1) values were more stable over time than behaviors and (2) the longitudinal effect of values on behaviors tended to be stronger than the longitudinal effect of behaviors on values. Findings are discussed in light of the recent developmental literature on value change.     

Three‐year cross‐lagged relationships among adolescents’ antisocial behavior,personal values,and judgment of wrongness

The current study examines reciprocal relations among adolescents’ values, antisocial behavior (ASB), and judgment of the wrongness of ASB over 3 years. Four hundred seven (M _age = 14.36 years; SD = .72; males = 56.8%) ninth grade students in Italy completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire, a self‐reported ASB scale, and a questionnaire aimed to evaluate how wrong they judged it to be to violate a set of moral and social rules. Responses were obtained again after 1 and 2 years. We analyzed separate cross‐lagged models for each of the higher‐order value dimensions according to Schwartz's model (conservation, openness to change, self‐enhancement, and self‐transcendence), using structural equation models. Self‐transcendence and conservation values fostered more negative judgments and less ASB over time whereas self‐enhancement and openness to change values had no effects. The mediating effect of judgment on the relationship between values and ASB was significant. Moreover, ASB mediated the effects of conservation on subsequent judgments. The results highlight the role of self‐transcendence and conservation values as protective factors against ASBs in adolescence.     

Values in Middle Childhood: Social and Genetic Contributions

Theories of value development often identify adolescence as the period for value formation, and cultural and familial factors as the sources for value priorities. However, recent research suggests that value priorities can be observed as early as in middle childhood, and several studies, including one on preadolescents, have suggested a genetic contribution to individual differences in values. In the current study, 174 pairs of monozygotic and dizygotic seven‐year‐old Israeli twins completed the Picture‐based Value Survey for Children (PBVS–C). We replicated basic patterns of relations between value priorities and variables of socialization—gender, religiosity, and socioeconomic status—that have been found in studies with adults. Most important, values of Self‐transcendence, Self‐enhancement, and Conservation, were found to be significantly affected by genetic factors (29 percent, 47 percent, and 31 percent, respectively), as well as non‐shared environment (71 percent, 53 percent, and 69 percent, respectively). Openness to change values, in contrast, were found to be unaffected by genetic factors at this age and were influenced by shared (19 percent) and non‐shared (81 percent) environment. These findings support the recent view that values are formed at earlier ages than had been assumed previously, and they further our understanding of the genetic and environmental factors involved in value formation at young ages.     

Private Self‐consciousness and Gender Moderate How Adolescents' Values Relate to Aggression

The relationship between values and aggression and the moderating roles of gender and private self‐ consciousness (PSC) on these relations were examined. Participants were 642 Arabic and Jewish adolescents in Israel (M age = 13.79, SD = .51; 53.9 percent females). Values and PSC were measured by self‐reports and aggression was measured by peer nominations. Aggression was positively correlated with self‐enhancement and openness to change values, and negatively correlated with self‐transcendence and conservation values. The results also suggested that PSC and gender play an important role in moderating these relations. The study's contributions to value theory and its practical implications are discussed.     

Secondary School Transition and the Use of Different Sources of Information for the Construction of the Academic Self‐concept

This study focuses on processes involved in students' academic self‐concept constructions before, during, and after secondary school transition. The study is based on a four‐wave longitudinal dataset (N = 1953). Structural equation modeling showed that during school transition, the impact of grades on students' academic self‐concepts in Math and English decreased whereas the effects of maternal competence perceptions increased. After the transition, the effects of grades increased, while the effects maternal competence beliefs decreased again. The results are interpreted in terms of differential emphasizing of sources of information for students' self‐concept construction. During school transition, elementary school grades lost informational value for self‐evaluations due to the changed frame of reference. To secure stable and valid self‐assessments, students emphasized other sources than grades; in this, case information obtained through parental competence appraisals. After transition, when valid grades were available for the students' constructions again, the temporarily heightened parental influence decreased again.     

Personal Values and Public Opinion*

Objective. Social science considers values a key motivator of human behavior, yet studies of values in public opinion have tended to focus on more limited political values. I investigate how a general theory of human values ( Schwartz, 1992 ) shapes public opinion. In one dimension, individuals are motivated by a desire for independent thought and action versus conformity to traditional social norms; in the second, individuals are motivated by a desire to care for others versus control or achieve superior social status over them. Methods. Statistical analysis of the European Social Survey, nationally representative surveys in 15 western European nations. Results. Human values are systematically related to a citizen's left‐right self‐identification, displaying appropriate sensitivity to party system context in Scandinavia, and explaining attitudes toward ethnic minority immigration, even when controlling for reasonable alternate explanations. Conclusion. Personal values along these two dimensions of social conflict merit further attention as sources of public opinion.     

Self‐control,peer preference,and loneliness in Chinese children: A three‐year longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to explore the longitudinal links among Chinese children's self‐control, social experiences, and loneliness, largely from a developmental cascades perspective (which postulates mechanisms about how effects within a particular domain of functioning can impact across additional domains over time). Participants were N = 1,066 primary school students in Shanghai, P. R. China, who were followed over three years from Grade 3 to Grade 5. Measures of children's behavioral self‐control, peer preference, and loneliness were obtained each year from peer nominations and child self‐reports. Results indicated that as compared with the unidirectional and bidirectional models, the developmental cascade model represented the best fit for the data. Within this model, a number of significant direct and indirect pathways were identified among variables and over time. For example, self‐control was found to indirectly contribute to later decreases in loneliness via a pathway through peer preference. As well, peer preference both directly and indirectly contributed to later increases in self‐control. Finally, loneliness directly led to decreases in self‐control from Grade 3 to Grade 4, but not from Grade 4 to Grade 5. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of self‐control for Chinese children's social and emotional functioning over time.     

A Mixed Methods Examination of Adolescents' Reports of the Values Emphasized in Their Families

Building on value socialization and personal values theories, this study examined adolescents' open‐ended reports of the values their families emphasize. Based on open‐ended reports of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of adolescents, we described adolescent‐reported familial values using qualitative and cluster analysis techniques. Adolescents' open‐ended responses about the values held by their families were coded using a prominent circumplex value model, and values largely, but not completely, aligned with this model. Using person‐oriented cluster analysis on the coded data, seven distinct value clusters were identified that captured various sets of values that adolescents hear from families. Several demographic differences emerged among the clusters, and mean differences by familial value cluster were found for adolescents' close‐ended reports of values of helping others and religiosity. Results suggest that adolescents are able to articulate values emphasized in their families in ways that fit a universal structure of values; these values are related in meaningful ways to the values that they themselves want to live by.     

Self‐report of emotional experience and peer nominations of expressivity: Predictability of change in teacher‐rated social behavior

We investigated individual differences in self‐reported emotional experience and peer‐perceived expressivity among children in mid‐ to late‐elementary school years. Specifically, we examined the constructs’ correspondence and temporal stability and also compared the degree to which each predicts change in classroom social behavior over 2 years. Participants were 199 children (Mage = 10 years, Time 1) and their classroom teachers who have participated in two times of assessment. We used self‐report of emotional experience and peer nominations of expressivity regarding happiness, anger, and sadness. Teachers rated children's social skills, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems. The correspondence was generally small in magnitude between self‐reported experience and peer nominations of expressivity. The stability of peer nominations of emotional expressivity was medium and comparable to that of self‐reported experience with the exception of happiness. The predictability of change in social behavior was more robust for peer nominations of expressivity than for self‐reported experience. We discussed the relevance of different dimensions of emotionality as well as informants in understanding the predictability of social behavior from emotionality. We also discussed the role of sociodemographic variables in emotional experience and expressivity and offered practical implications of peer nominations in the assessment of children's emotionality.     

Self-enhancement of Peer Acceptance: Implications for Children's Self-worth and Interpersonal Functioning

Changes in feelings of self‐worth and peer acceptance associated with self‐enhancing perceptions of their peer acceptance were examined for a normative sample and for a group of peer‐rejected children. Whether the correlates of self‐enhancement differed as a function of the way in which perceptions were assessed (i.e., general versus specific measures of self‐enhancement) or by the degree of enhancement were also studied. Using a longitudinal design, 670 students in grades 3 through 5 were assessed across an academic year. For the normative sample, general self‐enhancement of peer acceptance was associated with positive outcomes; specific self‐enhancement of peer acceptance was unrelated to changes in outcomes. Both general and specific self‐enhancement scores were associated with gains in one or more outcome measures in the rejected group. No support was found for the hypothesis that mild to moderate self‐enhancement is predictive of adjustment whereas extreme self‐enhancement is related to maladjustment.     

Connections between preschoolers' temperament traits and social behaviors as observed in a preschool setting

A growing literature has focused on the role children's temperament traits play in social behavior, but associations have traditionally been explored through informant report. We utilized a longitudinal, observational approach to (a) examine how children's traits related to their social behaviors when aggregated across the school year; (b) explore how traits and social behavior relate to children's age and sex; and (c) test how prior traits predicted subsequent change in solitary, reticent, and social play, above and beyond mean‐level change in play behavior over the course of the year. Fifty‐three children were observed in their preschool classroom, where coders rated children's traits and social behaviors over the course of one school year (N = 26,673 observations). Results found positive age‐related associations for positive emotionality (PE) and social play. In addition, aggregated traits explained a significant amount of the variance for every social behavior. Prior levels of lower PE, higher negative emotionality (NE), and higher effortful control (EC) predicted more subsequent time spent in reticent play, while NE and EC approached significance as predictors of solitary play. These results emphasize the role of early disposition on mean levels and rates of change in social behavior in a classroom.     

Dynamics of Mothers' Goals for Children in Ethnically Diverse Populations across the First Three Years of Life

Parents' socialization goals are important for cultural transmission across generations, but whether such goals vary by ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds and change over children's first years of life remains unexamined. In Study 1, African‐American, Dominican immigrant, and Mexican immigrant mothers (N = 300) reported on the qualities deemed as desirable or undesirable when children were aged 1 month, 14 months, and 2 years. Mothers spontaneously referred to a common set of qualities, including achievement, self‐maximization, proper demeanor, and connectedness. Most mothers emphasized achievement (desirable qualities) and disapproved of improper demeanor (undesirable qualities). Desirable qualities varied by age and socioeconomic factors more than did undesirable qualities. Mothers (N = 185) were followed up in Study 2 when children were aged three years, and ranked 21 qualities using a Q‐sort instrument. Ethnic differences were revealed at this more specific level, with Latina mothers being more similar in their rankings than African‐American mothers.     

Introduction to the Special Section Value Development from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood—New Insights from Longitudinal and Genetically Informed Research

Research into values at an early age has only started recently, although it has expanded quickly and dynamically in the past years. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, it provides an introduction to a special section that aims to help fill the gap in value development research. The special section brings together four new longitudinal and genetically informed studies of value development from the beginning of middle childhood through early adulthood. Second, this article reviews recent research from this special section and beyond, aiming to provide new directions to the field. With new methods for assessing children's values and an increased awareness of the role of values in children's and adolescents' development, the field now seems ripe for an in‐depth investigation. Our review of empirical evidence shows that, as is the case with adults, children's values are organized based on compatibilities and conflicts in their underlying motivations. Values show some consistency across situations, as well as stability across time. This longitudinal stability tends to increase with age, although mean changes are also observed. These patterns of change seem to be compatible with Schwartz's (1992) theory of values (e.g., if the importance of openness to change values increases, the importance of conservation values decreases). The contributions of culture, family, peers, significant life events, and individual characteristics to values are discussed, as well as the development of values as guides for behavior.     

Combating Conflicting Messages of Values: A Closer Look at Parental Strategies

This study examined how parents respond when their children encounter values outside the home that conflict with family values. Forty‐eight middle‐class European American parents completed questionnaires consisting of 11 vignettes asking how they would respond to hypothetical situations where outside sources posed potential conflicts with parental values to their adolescent child (M age of child=13.33 years). We identified five strategies that parents might use: controlled cocooning, reasoned cocooning, compromise, pre‐arming, and deference. Parents in the study enlisted all five strategies, with reasoned cocooning and pre‐arming occurring most frequently. The self‐reported importance of values to parents was the most important predictor of which strategy parents used, with parents using more controlling strategies to defend values that were most important to them. Importance of values also mediated the relation between religion and the parent's self‐reported desire for the child's compliance on personal issues, and parental strategy choice. This study is among the first to examine alternative parental strategies for regulating children's values acquisition outside the home, and shows that the extent of parental control is related to the importance of specific values to the parent.     

Predicting Children's Prosocial and Co‐operative Behavior from Their Temperamental Profiles: A Person‐centered Approach

The goal of this study was to examine how aspects of self‐regulation and negative emotionality predicted children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior concurrently and longitudinally using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mothers completed measures of children's temperamental proneness to negative emotionality and self‐regulation at 54 months. Teachers and parents completed measures of children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. A latent profile analysis of the temperamental variables revealed four profiles of children: those high in regulation and low in negative emotionality, those moderate in regulation and moderate in negative emotionality, those low in regulation and high in negative emotionality, and finally those who were very low in regulation but high in anger emotionality. Generally, children with profiles that were high or moderate in terms of regulation and low or moderate in terms of negative emotionality were rated as the most prosocial and co‐operative. Children with profiles that were less well regulated and who were high in negative emotionality (particularly anger proneness) were rated as less co‐operative and prosocial by parents and teachers.     

The Relations among Observational, Physiological, and Self-Report Measures of Children's Anger

Our first goal was to examine the relations among observational, physiological, and self‐report measures of children's anger. Our second goal was to investigate whether these relations varied by reactive or proactive aggression. Children (272 second‐grade boys and girls) participated in a procedure in which they lost a game and prize to a confederate who cheated. Skin conductance reactivity, heart rate reactivity, self‐reports of anger, angry facial expressions, and angry nonverbal behaviors were measured for each turn of the game. We used multi‐level regressions to calculate the relations among the 10 pairs of the five anger variables over the course of the game. Six of the 10 pairs of anger variables were positively related. These findings suggest that measuring children's anger using any one approach may not capture the full complexity of children's overall experience and expression of anger. Furthermore, three of the 10 relations were stronger at higher levels of reactive aggression, although none varied by proactive aggression. These findings suggest that reactive aggression is related to greater cohesiveness in the experience and expression of anger than is proactive aggression.     

The Nature and Effects of Young Children's Lies

Children's use of deception in a naturalistic setting was observed longitudinally in 40 families when children were 2 and 4 years old, and again two years later. Goals included describing children's lying behavior and parents’ reactions to lies, and comparing lies to other false statements. Lies were commonly told to avoid responsibility for transgressions, to falsely accuse siblings, and to gain control over another's behavior. Unlike children's other false statements (e.g., mistakes, pretense), lies were distinctly self‐serving. Parents rarely addressed the act of lying itself but often challenged the veracity of lies or addressed the underlying transgression. Older siblings lied more often than younger ones, and parents who allowed older siblings to lie at Time 1 had children who lied more often at Time 2. Results are considered from a speech‐act perspective and in terms of children's developing understanding of mental states.     

The Associations Between Socioeconomic Status,Caregivers' Depressive Symptoms,Children's Health‐Promoting Behavior,and Children's Physical Health: A Mediation Model

The aim of this study was to examine the mediating effects of children's health‐promoting behaviors on the association between socioeconomic status, caregivers' depressive symptoms, and children's physical health outcomes. We used the first wave of “Seoul Education and Health Welfare Panel.” Data were collected from 820 fourth‐grade elementary and first‐year middle school students and their caregivers using self‐administered surveys. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the mediating effects of health‐promoting behaviors. Bias‐corrected bootstrap confidence intervals were used to test the mediating effect. The results showed that both low socioeconomic status and caregivers' depressive symptoms were negatively associated with a child's health‐promoting behaviors. Children's health‐promoting behaviors were positively associated with physical health. However, children's physical health was not significantly associated with socioeconomic status but was marginally associated with caregivers' depressive symptoms. We found that children's health‐promoting behaviors significantly mediated associations between both socioeconomic status and children's physical health and between caregivers' depressive symptoms and children's physical health. Based on the findings, we suggest the development and implementation of school‐based, health‐enhancement programs as a means to improve the general health of all children and to reduce health inequalities.     

What Do You Think? The Relationship between Person Reference and Communication About the Mind in Toddlers

The present studies examined the relationship between children's use of grammatical structures indicating self–other differentiation (i.e., personal pronouns, verb conjugation) and their ability to use language to express their own and others' mental states (MSL). In Study 1, 104 parents of two‐ to three‐year‐old children filled out online checklists assessing children's vocabulary, their use of MSL, and first‐ and second‐person pronouns and verb forms. In Study 2, 77 mothers of 1.5‐ to 2.5‐year‐old children filled out the MacArthur–Bates communicative development inventory, and additional checklists for MSL and verb conjugation. Results of both studies showed that children's use of grammatical person reference is strongly related to their level of grammatical abilities. Importantly, pronominal and inflectional references to others were correlated with children's discourse about the mind. Thus, linguistic tools that are used to distinguish self from others are not only indicators of children's grammatical development, but also their level of sociocognitive understanding.