Publications by authors named "Richard W Robins"
The present study addresses a fundamental yet largely neglected question about personality development: To what extent are changes in parent personality traits associated with changes in their child's personality traits? Numerous developmental processes suggest that parent and child personality might have transactional associations over time, contributing to their codevelopment. This codevelopment may be homotypic (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLoneliness is a pressing public health concern, particularly among adolescents and young adults. This preregistered study examined changes in time spent alone from 7th to 12th grade, as well as relationship and personality predictors of time spent alone in adolescence and loneliness in early adulthood, using data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origin youth in the United States, a rapidly growing yet understudied demographic. Time spent alone showed linear increases from 7th to 12th grade, with greater increases in time spent alone in high school for youth who spent a high proportion of time alone at the start of high school (9th grade).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Warm and supportive parenting is linked to better emotion regulation in children, but less is understood about its impact on adolescents, especially during a time when mental health issues often emerge.
- The study focused on how maternal and paternal warmth from ages 10 to 16 affects adolescents' respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure related to emotion regulation, at age 17 in a sample of 229 Mexican-origin youths.
- Results indicated that increases in maternal warmth during adolescence were connected to higher RSA in youths, suggesting that positive maternal interactions can enhance emotional regulation capabilities in teens.
Article Synopsis
- The study examines how family and peer stressors affect alcohol use patterns in Mexican-origin adolescents over time, utilizing longitudinal data from 674 participants.
- Results indicate that early adolescent stressors are more effective as predictors of alcohol use trajectories when analyzed as growth trajectories rather than as individual instances of stress.
- The findings highlight the importance of developing strategies to reduce the long-term impact of stressors on alcohol consumption among Latinx youth.
Article Synopsis
- Loneliness tends to increase as kids move from childhood into their teenage years, partly due to the body's natural stress response changes during puberty.
- Different individuals react to stress in varying ways, leading some to withdraw socially ("fight-or-flight") and others to seek social support ("tend-and-befriend").
- The authors suggest a model that explains these reactions and propose interventions aimed at improving social relationships, personality traits, and managing stress to reduce loneliness in adolescents.
Article Synopsis
- Both the parasympathetic nervous system and social support from family and friends play important roles in the development of prosocial behavior among adolescents, especially in racially and ethnically minoritized groups.
- In a study involving 229 U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents, findings indicated that family support was linked to prosocial behavior at 17 years, while friend support influenced civic behavior at 19 years.
- The research revealed that adolescents with moderate baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) showed higher cognitive empathy and prosocial behavior, highlighting the importance of both biological and social factors in fostering prosocial development.
Article Synopsis
- * A study involving 674 Mexican-origin youth and their parents tracked pride over 14 years, revealing that youth's pride generally decreases during early adolescence but starts to increase in emerging adulthood.
- * The findings highlight that while youth's pride is not directly related to their mothers', there are complex dynamics between youth's and fathers' pride, suggesting that parents significantly influence their children's identity development in a shared process.
Article Synopsis
- The study analyzed data from 674 Mexican-origin youth over 14 years to explore how materialistic values (MV) changed during adolescence (ages 10-16) and their impact on life satisfaction in early adulthood (ages 17-23).
- Results showed that MV declined from early to late adolescence, with youth from higher-income families and those with better-educated parents exhibiting less materialism.
- Additionally, greater decreases in MV were linked to higher initial life satisfaction at age 17, suggesting that starting with higher life satisfaction may influence materialistic values over time.
Article Synopsis
- The study examines personality development from adolescence to early adulthood, focusing on metatraits (like stability and plasticity), the Big Five personality domains, and specific personality facets among Mexican-origin youth with limited socioeconomic resources.
- Using data from a longitudinal study with 645 participants assessed five times between ages 14 and 23, the research reveals both mean-level changes in personality characteristics and unique patterns of development at various hierarchical levels.
- Findings indicate increases in exploratory behaviors and maturity traits, consistent rank-order stability in personality traits, and highlight the importance of considering sociocultural diversity in understanding personality development.
Article Synopsis
- - The study explores how temperament traits from late childhood to adolescence impact academic outcomes in young adulthood, using data from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth.
- - Results show that higher Effortful Control (EC) at Age 10 predicts better academic performance later, while higher Negative Emotionality (NEM) correlates with worse outcomes, although not all aspects of NEM have the same effect.
- - Parental monitoring plays a critical role: lower monitoring allows changes in EC and NEM to significantly influence academic success, whereas higher monitoring weakens these associations.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigated how ethnic pride, familismo, and respeto influence positive youth development (PYD) in Mexican-origin adolescents in the U.S.
- Researchers used a bifactor model to analyze the Five Cs of PYD—Caring, Character, Competence, Confidence, and Connection—establishing that this framework is stable over time from ages 14 to 16.
- Findings revealed that a strong cultural orientation at age 14 positively influenced all aspects of PYD, with no differences based on gender or nativity, highlighting the significance of cultural factors in fostering youth development.
Article Synopsis
- Cognitive problems like memory and language issues are a growing public health concern, particularly starting in midlife, yet research on their risk and protective factors is limited.
- A study of 883 Mexican-origin adults over 12 years found that personality traits (like Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Extraversion) significantly affected cognitive function, with high Neuroticism linked to worse outcomes and high Conscientiousness associated with better memory and mental abilities.
- Socioeconomic factors, including income and economic stress, also played a crucial role, showing that better economic conditions improve cognitive function, while increased financial stress worsens it; additionally, higher education levels were beneficial for cognitive health over time.
Article Synopsis
- Dickens and Murphy argue that the existing Authentic and Hubristic Pride (AP/HP) scales are not valid due to their inability to accurately measure the theoretical concepts of pride, suggesting instead that new scales should be developed using a top-down methodology.
- The authors of the original AP/HP scales disagree, providing evidence supporting the validity of their measures and arguing that the bottom-up approach they utilized is more effective.
- While they acknowledge areas for improvement in the AP/HP scales and endorse Dickens and Murphy's call for ongoing research, they advocate for a "living document" approach to enhance the scales further.
The Development of Shyness from Late Childhood to Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study of Mexican-origin Youth.
Katherine M Lawson
,
Brenna L Barrett
,
Ryan J Cerny
,
Kaitlyn E Enrici
,
Juan Garcia-Cardenas
,
Richard W Robins
Soc Psychol Personal Sci
January 2023
Shyness, the tendency to be inhibited and uncomfortable in novel social situations, is a consequential personality trait, especially during adolescence. The present study examined the development of shyness from late childhood (age 10) through adolescence (age 16) using data from a large, longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth ( = 674). Using both self- and mother-reports of shyness assessed via the , we found moderate to high rank-order stabilities across two-year intervals and a mean-level decrease in shyness from age 10 to 16.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Hispanic/Latinx adults are at increased risk for cognitive impairment, and it is critically important to identify modifiable risk factors for cognitive impairment in this population. We addressed two key questions: (1) How does perceived discrimination change across middle adulthood? And, (2) how are discrimination and the trajectory of discrimination associated with cognitive function?
Methods: We used data from 1,110 Mexican-origin adults between 26 and 62 years old (63% female; 85% born in Mexico). Participants completed a perceived ethnic discrimination scale five times across 12 years and completed cognitive assessments in the last wave, which were composited into a measure of overall cognitive function.
Article Synopsis
- * Findings revealed that increases in adversity faced by children led to declines in their effortful control, while parent adversity slightly increased over the same period.
- * The research indicated that higher levels of child adversity were linked to poorer self-regulation outcomes, without any influence from specific coping strategies used by the children.
Effect size guidelines for cross-lagged effects.
Ulrich Orth
,
Laurenz L Meier
,
Janina Larissa Bühler
,
Laura C Dapp
,
Samantha Krauss
,
Richard W Robins
Psychol Methods
April 2024
Cross-lagged models are by far the most commonly used method to test the prospective effect of one construct on another, yet there are no guidelines for interpreting the size of cross-lagged effects. This research aims to establish empirical benchmarks for cross-lagged effects, focusing on the cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). We drew a quasirepresentative sample of studies published in four subfields of psychology (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impact of social disadvantage on autonomic physiology of latinx adolescents: The role of environmental risks.
New Dir Child Adolesc Dev
March 2022
Article Synopsis
- * Researchers assessed 229 adolescents annually from ages 10 to 16, analyzing correlations between their autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning and environmental factors such as pollution, housing, and neighborhood conditions.
- * Findings reveal that increased exposure to water and air pollution is linked to altered ANS functioning, while living in areas with high housing burden correlates with healthier autonomic patterns, suggesting environmental toxins may affect future health outcomes.
The benefits of self-esteem: Reply to Krueger et al. (2022) and Brummelman (2022).
Am Psychol
January 2022
Article Synopsis
- Krueger et al. (2022) criticize Orth & Robins (2022) for suggesting that self-esteem primarily benefits subjective outcomes, arguing that objective benefits are not sufficiently demonstrated.
- The authors counter this claim by presenting evidence that shows high self-esteem has positive effects on various objective measures like social relationships, mental health, and behavior.
- They also agree with Brummelman (2022) on the importance of proper interventions for boosting children's self-esteem without fostering narcissism, emphasizing that such interventions can be advantageous across all age groups.
Article Synopsis
- The article reviews decades of debate on the benefits of self-esteem, with researchers arguing it helps individuals succeed across various life areas, despite some skepticism.
- Through extensive research, including meta-analyses, it finds that self-esteem positively impacts relationships, academics, work, mental and physical health, and reduces antisocial behavior across diverse groups.
- The study concludes that self-esteem is a significant adaptive trait, suggesting that well-designed interventions to enhance self-esteem could benefit both individuals and society.
Article Synopsis
- The study explores how self-esteem changes during the school-to-work transition, noting a lack of prior research in this area.
- Data from 368 adolescents was collected over 14 years, revealing consistent increases in self-esteem but a slight slowdown after beginning a job.
- Variability in self-esteem changes was observed, particularly influenced by factors like college graduation and educational expectations, indicating that individual experiences shape self-esteem development during this transition.
Article Synopsis
- Reappraisal and suppression are two emotion-regulation strategies, where reappraisal helps reduce depressive symptoms while suppression typically increases them; this study focuses on Mexican-origin adolescents.
- The research tracked 228 Mexican-origin youths over three years, assessing how reappraisal and suppression at age 17 affected aspects of depression, specifically anhedonia (loss of pleasure) and general distress, across ages 16, 18, and 19.
- Findings revealed that reappraisal led to lower anhedonia over time, while suppression was linked to higher anhedonia initially; however, neither strategy affected general distress, and other factors like family values and income did not influence these results.
Sibling Constructs: What Are They, Why Do They Matter, and How Should You Handle Them?
Pers Soc Psychol Rev
November 2021
Article Synopsis
- Researchers are often faced with "sibling constructs" in psychology, which are related but distinct concepts that can lead to confusion in studies.
- The article discusses how sibling constructs relate to common fallacies in research, providing a framework that includes 10 criteria for assessing these relationships, using self-esteem and grandiose narcissism as examples.
- Lastly, the authors propose systematic strategies for recognizing and managing sibling constructs to improve clarity and rigor in social-personality psychology research.
Article Synopsis
- A study explored how personality, measured by the Big Five Inventory, develops over time in a diverse group of 1,110 Mexican-origin adults over 12 years, revealing that personality traits remain stable yet show slight decreases as individuals age.
- The research found limited impact of sociodemographic and cultural factors on personality changes, although associations were observed between cultural values and traits like Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness.
- The findings emphasize the importance of including diverse populations in personality development research, as they differ from prior studies primarily focused on middle-class, educated White individuals.