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This article suggests that values become better indicators of individual characteristics during adolescence. Adolescents increase their endorsement of self-focused values and decrease their valuation of other-focused values. They maintain the integrity of their value system despite value changes, confirming and validating value theory.

Values, or the guiding standards of adolescents' lives, influence which behaviors are considered more justified than others. The relationship between values and social behavior has been established across many studies including the relationship of values and aggression. But only a few studies have examined these relationships among youth. Moreover, a question that remains open is the direction of these relationships. The present study examined the concurrent and longitudinal relations between values and peer nominated aggression in 3 time points with a 1-year interval (8th grade-10th grade) in a sample of 678 Israeli adolescents (51.2% girls). Students completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz et al., 2001) and 6 items of peer nominations of aggression. As hypothesized, I found positive associations between aggression and self-enhancement and openness to change values concurrently. Similarly, I obtained negative associations between aggression and self-transcendence and conservation values. Moreover, crossed-lagged models revealed that self-enhancement values were positively associated with aggression 1 year later. The association between aggression and future self-enhancement values, however, was not significant. Finally, I found mutual associations between self-transcendence values and aggression across time.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had immense impact on people’s lives, potentially leading individuals to reevaluate what they prioritize in life (i.e., their values). We report longitudinal data from Australians 3 years prior to the pandemic, at pandemic onset (April 2020, N = 2,321), and in November–December 2020 ( n = 1,442). While all higher order values were stable prior to the pandemic, conservation values, emphasizing order and stability, became more important during the pandemic. In contrast, openness to change values, emphasizing self-direction and stimulation, showed a decrease during the pandemic, which was reversed in late 2020. Self-transcendence values, emphasizing care for close others, society, and nature, decreased by late 2020. These changes were amplified among individuals worrying about the pandemic. The results support psychological theory of values as usually stable, but also an adaptive system that responds to significant changes in environmental conditions. They also test a new mechanism for value change, worry.

Living in complex social worlds, individuals encounter discordant values across life contexts, potentially resulting in different importance of values across contexts. Value differentiation is defined here as the degree to which values receive different importance depending on the context in which they are considered. Early and mid-adolescents (N = 3,497; M = 11.45 years, SD = 0.87 and M = 16.10 years, SD = 0.84, respectively) from 4 cultural groups (majority and former Soviet Union immigrants in Israel and Germany) rated their values in 3 contexts (family, school, and country). Value differentiation varied across individuals. Early adolescents showed lower value differentiation than mid-adolescents. Immigrant (especially first generation) adolescents, showed higher value differentiation than majority adolescents, reflecting the complex social reality they face while negotiating cultures.

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The relationship between values and aggression and the moderating roles of gender and private self-consciousness (PSC) on these relations were examined. Participants were 642 Arabic and Jewish adolescents in Israel (M age = 13.79, SD = .51; 53.9 percent females). Values and PSC were measured by self-reports and aggression was measured by peer nominations. Aggression was positively correlated with selfenhancement and openness to change values, and negatively correlated with selftranscendence and conservation values. The results also suggested that PSC and gender play an important role in moderating these relations. The study's contributions to value theory and its practical implications are discussed.

The research examined the relationship between multiple social identifications and selfesteem. Early adolescents (M ¼ 11.4, SD ¼ .95) and mid-adolescents (M ¼ 15.9, SD ¼ 1.18) from Germany and Israel (n ¼ 2337) were studied. Respondents described their social identification as students, family members, and as members of the majority national group and reported self-esteem. A longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-cultural design revealed, as predicted, multiple social identifications related positively to self-esteem concurrently; they also related positively to self-esteem longitudinally over the course of a year. Moreover, multiple social identifications were found to be antecedent to selfesteem, not vice versa. Finally, multiple social identifications were found to decrease over time. The article discusses the contribution of multiple social identifications to selfesteem at different ages and in various contexts.