Prospective Relations Between Adolescents' Social-emotional Competencies and Their Friendships

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage  = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

The Interplay Between Adolescents' Friendships and the Exchange of Help: A Longitudinal Multiplex Social Network Study

The aim of this study was to unravel the interrelatedness of friendship and help, and to examine the characteristics of friendship and help networks. The effects of mutual versus one-sided help relations on friendship initiation and maintenance, and vice versa, were examined. Friendship and help networks were analyzed (N = 953 students; 41 classrooms; M_age  = 12.7). The results illustrate that friendship and help networks show some similarities, but only partly overlap and have distinct characteristics. Longitudinal multiplex social network analyses showed that mutual help was important for the maintenance of friendship, but not for the initiation of friendship. Further, particularly mutual friendships provided a context in which help took place. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Pathways Into Psychosocial Adjustment in Children: Modeling the Effects of Trait Emotional Intelligence, Social-Emotional Problems, and Gender

Trait Emotional intelligence (Trait EI) can be understood as a personality trait related to individual differences in recognition, processing, and the regulation of emotionally charged information. Trait EI has been considered a variable of great importance in determining psychosocial adjustment. However, most research on Trait EI has focused on adult and adolescent populations, while very few studies have explored its influence on children. The aim of this study was to analyze possible pathways into psychosocial adjustment in children by examining the combined effects of Trait EI and emotional and social problems. It also aimed to assess the possible mediating role of gender in this relationship. A total of 268 Spanish children participated in this study, ranging in age from 8 to 12 years (mean age = 10.09, SD = 1.32, 45.10% male). Selected measures were applied through a web-based survey called DetectaWeb. The regression and mediation/moderation analyses confirmed that psychosocial adjustment in children was determined by Trait EI directly and by emotional and social problems in an indirect way. Together, the three variables explained 46% of the variance in psychosocial adjustment, although Trait EI was the most powerful predictor (44%), demonstrating incremental validity over and above social and emotional problems. In addition, gender was shown to be a moderating variable between Trait EI and psychosocial adjustment; for girls specifically, lower Trait EI scores were a determinant of lower levels of psychosocial adjustment, regardless of emotional and social problems. It can be concluded that the identified pathways provide keys for emotional education interventions aimed at promoting psychosocial adjustment, well-being, and good mental health among children. Our findings support the buffer role of Trait EI against maladjustment risk in children, but more clearly in girls.