The importance of maternal education for children's academic outcomes is widely recognized, and yet the multiple potential mechanisms that explain this relationship are underexplored. The authors integrate theories of human, cultural, and social capital with 2 developmental psychology theories—bioecological theory and developmental niche theory—to draw attention to how maternal education may influence children's academic outcomes through a range of parenting mechanisms, some of which have been largely neglected in research. This framework provides a more complete picture of how maternal education shapes proximal and distal influences on children's academic outcomes and the ways in which these mechanisms interact and reinforce one another across time and context. The implications of this framework for future family research are then discussed.

The authors explored trajectories of perceived discrimination over a 6-year period (five assessments in 6th-11th grade) in relation to academic, behavioral, and psychological adjustment in 8th and 11th grades. They distinguished discrimination from adults versus peers in addition to overt versus covert discrimination from peers. The sample included 226 African American, White, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese adolescents (ages 11-12 at Time 1) recruited in sixth grade from six public schools in New York City. All forms of discrimination increased during middle school and decreased during high school. The frequency with which adolescents reported different sources and types of discrimination varied across ethnicity/race, but not gender. Initial levels and rates of change in discrimination predicted academic, behavioral, and psychological adjustment in 8th and 11th grades, albeit in complex ways.

We modelled the associations between the HEXACO dimensions of personality, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Right–Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and prejudice towards dangerous, derogated and dissident groups ( N = 454 undergraduates). Consistent with a Big–Five model, low Openness to Experience predicted RWA and therefore dangerous and dissident group prejudice. As predicted, low Emotionality (and Openness) rather than Agreeableness predicted SDO and therefore derogated and dissident group prejudice. Comparison with meta–analytic averages of Big–Five data supported expected similarities and differences in the association of Big–Five and HEXACO models of personality with ideology. Finally, Honesty–Humility simultaneously predicted increases in RWA but decreases in SDO, and thus opposing effects on prejudice. These opposing effects have gone unidentified in research employing Big–Five models of personality structure. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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People not only dehumanize others, they also dehumanize the self in response to their own harmful behavior. We examine this self-dehumanization effect across four studies. Studies 1 and 2 show that when participants are perpetrators of social ostracism, they view themselves as less human compared with when they engage in nonaversive interpersonal interactions. Perceived immorality of their behavior mediated this effect. Studies 3 and 4 highlight the behavioral consequences of self-dehumanization. The extent to which participants saw themselves as less human after perpetrating social ostracism predicted subsequent prosocial behavior. Studies 2 to 4 also demonstrate that consequences of self-dehumanization occur independently of any effects of self-esteem or mood. The findings are discussed in relation to previous work on dehumanization and self-perception. We conclude that in the context of immoral actions (self) dehumanization may be functional.

Although the strong link between maternal education and children's outcomes is one of the most well-established findings in developmental psychology (Reardon, 2011; Sirin, 2005), less is known about how young, low-income children are influenced by their mothers completing additional education. In this research, longitudinal data from the Head Start Impact Study were used to explore the associations between increases in maternal education and Head Start eligible children's cognitive skills and behavioral problems in 1st grade. Propensity score weighting was used to identify a balanced comparison group of 1,362 children whose mothers did not increase their education between baseline (when children were aged 3 or 4) and children's kindergarten year, who are similar on numerous covariates to the 262 children whose mothers did increase their education. Propensity-score weighted regression analyses indicated that increases in maternal education were positively associated with children's standardized cognitive scores, but also with higher teacher-reported externalizing behavioral problems in 1st grade. The increases in externalizing behavioral problems were larger for children whose mothers had less than a college degree at baseline.

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