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Although much evidence suggests that gender stereotyping becomes less flexible during adolescence, results of the present study indicate that gender stereotypes may actually become more flexible at some point during certain adolescent school transitions. The authors measured the flexibility of gender stereotypes in adolescents in Grades 4 through 11, using a combined cross-sectional and longitudinal design. Results indicated that flexibility increased for stereotypes concerning the psychological attributes of men and women after the transition into junior high school, regardless of whether this transition occurred during the 7th or 8th grade. Over the remaining years of junior high and high school, stereotype flexibility decreased. These results help resolve previous inconsistencies found in the literature by suggesting when and why changes in gender stereotype flexibility versus rigidity occur during adolescence.

In order to explore the development of self-evaluative biases, children at 3 age levels (5-6, 7-8, 9-10) evaluated themselves or another child when given social or temporal comparison feedback. Evaluative biases were indicated by higher evaluations for the self than another, especially after failure. Children at different ages were not differentially responsive to temporal vs. social comparison information. However, evaluative bias in response to the type of evaluation differed by age; there was greater bias for general ability evaluations by older children and greater bias for specific performance evaluations by younger children. Alternative explanations for these self-other differences were minimized, as differences in visual orientation were held constant and differences in knowledge of effort were controlled statistically. Other aspects of the design as well as sex differences support a motivational interpretation of these biases. How these biases are manifested is related to children's level of understanding and concerns at different ages.

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Receiving social support can entail both costs and benefits for recipients. Thus, theories of effective support have proposed that support should address recipients' needs to be beneficial. This paper proposes the importance of support that addresses recipients' self-regulatory needs. We present a novel construct-regulatory effectiveness of support (RES)-which posits that support that addresses recipients' needs to understand their situation (truth) and to feel capable of managing their situation (control) will engender support benefits. We hypothesized that receiving support higher on RES would predict beneficial support outcomes. We further hypothesized that these effects would be especially pronounced for self-regulation relevant outcomes, such as better mood and increased motivation, which, in turn, can be important for successful self-regulation. We established the construct validity of RES and then investigated its effects in daily life and in laboratory support discussions. In 8 studies and a meta-analysis pooling across studies, results showed that RES predicted self-regulation relevant support outcomes, and these effects of RES were stronger than the effects of perceived responsiveness, a construct that is known to enhance interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, RES was linked to self-regulatory success: Participants who received support higher on RES were more motivated to perform well on a stressful speech, which subsequently predicted better speech performance. These findings enhance knowledge of effective social support by underscoring the importance of addressing recipients' self-regulatory needs in the support process.

Two studies examined the accuracy and differentiation of 4-5-yearolds', 8-9-year-olds', and undergraduates' predictions of the preferences of peers and nonpeers. In Study 1 each subject was presented with separate arrays of snacks, meals, and activities depicted on cards and were asked to select their own preferences and the preferences of peers and nonpeers ("grown-ups" for the children, and "4-to 5-year-olds" for the undergraduates). In Study 2 each subject selected his or her own preference, the preference of peers, and the preferences of both older nonpeers ("grown-ups") and younger nonpeers ("2-year-olds"). For all age groups, including 4-5-year-olds: (1) the preference predictions differentiated peers from nonpeers, as well as older nonpeers from younger nonpeers; (2) it was very rare for a subject to select his or her own preferences for the preference predictions of both peers and nonpeers. There were no consistent developmental differences either in the tendency to select one's own preferences when predicting the preferences of others or in the tendency to differentiate predictions for peers and nonpeers. In contrast, there was a clear developmental increase in predictive accuracy, with 4-5-yearolds being relatively inaccurate in predicting the preferences of nonpeers. The inadequacy of constructs such as "assumed similarity" and "egocentrism" as explanations for the general accuracy in predicting peers' preferences and the 4-5-year-olds' inaccuracy in predicting nonpeers' preferences is discussed. Possible alternative variables underlying developmental increases in judgmental accuracy, such as "social reference," "self reference," and "social category knowledge," are then proposed.