Parents' optimism is related to their ratings of their children's behaviour

Parental Optimism Improves Youth Psychological Well-Being: Family Cohesion and Youth Optimism as Serial Mediators

Focusing on the family system, this study simultaneously examined the effects of the parental factor, family functioning, and individual factor on youth psychological well-being. Overall, 332 youths and their parents were involved in this research and responded to an online questionnaire measuring parental optimism, family cohesion, youth optimism, and youth psychological well-being. The results suggested that (1) parental optimism was positively related to youth psychological well-being; (2) both family cohesion and youth optimism mediated the connection between parental optimism and youth psychological well-being; and (3) the link between parental optimism and youth psychological well-being was mediated by family cohesion and youth optimism in sequence. The present study reveals the underlying mechanism of how to improve youth psychological well-being from within the family system.

Transactional development of parent personality and child temperament

Stability and change in parental extraversion and neuroticism were studied in transaction with their views of their child's temperament from the age of six months to the age of five‐and‐a‐half years in 109 mother–father–child triads (parent–daughter: n = 61, parent–son: n = 48). While parental traits showed high stability, infants' higher positive affectivity predicted an increase in parental extraversion over 5 years, and infant's higher activity predicted a decrease in parental neuroticism. Parent‐rated temperament showed expected heterotypic continuity. Initially higher parental extraversion predicted an increase in the child's effortful control, and higher parental neuroticism predicted an increase in the child's negative affectivity. The results indicate that parental personality and child temperament develop in transaction promoting change in each other. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Lifespan development of personality and developmental outcome domains

Commenting on the papers of this special issue, an evolutionary and lifespan perspective was taken. A model was proposed of parallels in the trajectories of the development of personality and developmental outcome domains across the life course. Despite findings of mean‐level change in personality development, the hypothesis was propagated of absence of normative change in personality development and developmental outcome domains across the life course, combined with the preservation of stable individual differences for the majority of people and unstable individual differences for minorities. The role of the role of personality in psychological processes involved in problem solving on developmental outcome domains needs further systematic study. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dispositional optimism

Optimism is a cognitive construct (expectancies regarding future outcomes) that also relates to motivation: optimistic people exert effort, whereas pessimistic people disengage from effort. Study of optimism began largely in health contexts, finding positive associations between optimism and markers of better psychological and physical health. Physical health effects likely occur through differences in both health-promoting behaviors and physiological concomitants of coping. Recently, the scientific study of optimism has extended to the realm of social relations: new evidence indicates that optimists have better social connections, partly because they work harder at them. In this review, we examine the myriad ways this trait can benefit an individual, and our current understanding of the biological basis of optimism.

Perceptions of problem behavior in adolescents' families: perceiver, target, and family effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members' reports of each others' externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others' behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.