This study examined how adolescents' risk-taking behaviors were related to their prosocial behaviors on a daily level and how this association differed depending on adolescents' daily and average levels of sensation seeking and social craving. Adolescents (N = 212; M age = 15 years) completed daily diaries for 14 days. Adolescents were more likely to engage in prosocial behavior on days when they also took risks, but only when they also felt high levels of social craving. The daily link between risk-taking and prosocial behavior did not vary based on daily or individual differences in sensation seeking. Results suggest that when adolescents feel highly motivated to connect with others, their risk-taking and prosocial tendencies co-occur on a daily basis.
Emotional facial expressions are relevant to flirtation because they provide information on an individual’s intentions or motivations. Individual differences in the ability to accurately detect and discriminate between normative facially expressed emotions could lead to misperceptions of the level of sexual interest being conveyed, which has been linked to sexual assault and harassment. To explore this notion, we recruited a national sample of college aged male and female participants ( N = 219) who completed a novel facial expression recognition task used to detect accuracy in processing facial emotions of happiness, surprise, anger, and disgust. Participants also viewed multiple video clips of blind dates between two different-sex participants and rated each partner on their degree of flirtatiousness. Consistent with predictions, we found that individuals who misidentified other facial emotions for happiness appeared to overestimate flirtation. Though not predicted, participants who failed to accurately identify happy faces also overestimated flirtation, whereas individuals who took longer to respond to emotional facial expressions and misidentified an emotion as conveying happiness made greater errors in perceptions of flirtatiousness. Overall, these findings suggest that individual differences in the ability to detect and discriminate happiness through facial expressions are relevant to misperceptions of flirtatious behavior, and more broadly illuminates the role of basic emotion recognition on perceptions of flirtatiousness.
Sexual health communication in adolescence is important for sexual well-being. With limited empirical work utilizing longitudinal methodologies, this study aimed to investigate how the frequency of sexual communication with parents, peers, and dating partners changes across adolescence and varies based on sex, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Participants included 886 U.S. adolescents (54.4% females; 45.9% White, 22.6% Hispanic/Latinx, 21.6% Black/African American) surveyed yearly from middle school through 12th grade. Growth curve models were used to estimate trajectories of the frequency in communication. Results showed curvilinear trajectories for adolescents' sexual communication with their parents, best friends, and dating partners over time. Although all three trajectories showed curvilinear patterns, sexual communication with parents and best friends increased earlier in adolescence and leveled off, while sexual communication with dating partners was lower in early adolescence and showed a steep increase across adolescence. Communication trajectories significantly diverged depending on adolescents' sex and race/ethnicity but not their sexual orientation. This study provides the first evidence of developmental changes over time in adolescent sexual communication with parents, best friends, and dating partners. Developmental implications for adolescents' sexual decision making are discussed. Public Significance StatementWe identified yearly trends, longitudinal trajectories, and sociodemographic differences in adolescent sexual health communication with parents, best friends, and dating partners in a diverse sample of adolescents. This information can provide insights when developing targeted interventions to reduce sexual health disparities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.