This study assessed the importance of teacher preference of individual students, relative to peer rejection and student aggression, as an independent predictor of children's emotional adjustment and grades. First, a longitudinal, cross-lagged path analysis was conducted to determine the patterns of influence among teacher preference, peer rejection, and student aggression. Then, parallel growth analyses were examined to test whether lower initial and declining teacher preference, beyond the influence of initial-level and change in peer rejection and student aggression, predicted change in loneliness, depression, social anxiety, and grades. Social adjustment, emotional adjustment, and academic adjustment were assessed in the fall and spring of two consecutive school years with 1,193 third-grade students via peer-, teacher-, and self-report instruments as well as school records. In the cross-lagged path analysis, reciprocal influence over time between teacher preference and peer rejection was found, and student aggression predicted lower teacher preference and higher peer rejection. In the growth analyses, initial and declining teacher preference were independent predictors of increasing loneliness and declining grades. Discussion focuses on the relevance of the results within a transactional model of school adaptation.Researchers have identified social acceptance by teachers and peers as leading to divergent adjustment outcomes in middle childhood; however, research on teacher preference and peer social acceptance largely has proceeded as independent endeavors. As a result, little is known regarding the interrelation of teacher preference and peer rejection over time. The current study characterized both teacher social acceptance of individual students (i.e., teacher preference) and peer social acceptance as important aspects of overall classroom social acceptance, with implications for personal adjustment. Considering the developmental importance of social relationships with teachers and peers, we sought to clarify the longitudinal relations between teacher preference and peer rejection as well as the independent contributions of teacher preference to emotional adjustment and grades in middle childhood.Given the complexity of variables impacting human development, transactional models appear best suited to conceptualizing and studying change and development over time. TransactionalCorrespondence to: Melissa E. DeRosier.Correspondence concerning the manuscript should be addressed to Melissa DeRosier at 3-C ISD, 1903 North Harrison Avenue, Suite 101, Cary, NC 27513, or by email at derosier@3cisd.com.. Sterett H. Mercer and Melissa E. DeRosier, 3-C Institute for Social Development, Cary, NC. Sterett H. Mercer is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi.Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyed...

We examined differences in mothers' and fathers' parenting practices in relation to child externalizing behavior. Data were collected from a community sample of 135 cohabiting couples with a child aged 6-12. The couples were recruited through undergraduate and graduate students. Both parents were required to complete a series of questionnaires assessing demographic, parental, and child variables. Results indicated that after controlling for parental depression and marital conflict, all parenting variables were significantly related to child externalizing behavior; however, parent and/or child sex moderated these relations. Specifically, parental involvement was only significant for fathers and sons, positive parenting was only significant for mothers and sons, poor monitoring/supervision was only significant for girls, and only mothers' inconsistent discipline was related to externalizing behavior. These results offer practical information regarding identification of children at risk for behavioral problems, as well as potential targets for prevention and intervention.

Spite is an understudied construct that has been virtually ignored within the personality, social, and clinical psychology literatures. This study introduces a self-report Spitefulness Scale to assess individual differences in spitefulness. The scale was initially tested on a large sample of 946 college students and cross-validated on a national sample of 297 adults. The scale was internally consistent in both samples. Factor analysis supported a 1-factor solution for the initial pool of 31 items. Item response theory analysis was used to identify the best performing of the original 31 items in the university sample and reduce the scale to 17 items. Tests of measurement invariance indicated that the items functioned similarly across both university and national samples, across both men and women, and across both ethnic majority and minority groups. Men reported higher levels of spitefulness than women, younger people were more spiteful than older people, and ethnic minority members reported higher levels of spitefulness than ethnic majority members. Across both samples, spitefulness was positively associated with aggression, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and guilt-free shame, and negatively correlated with self-esteem, guilt-proneness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Ideally, this Spitefulness Scale will be able to predict behavior in both laboratory settings (e.g., ultimatum games, aggression paradigms) and everyday life, contribute to the diagnosis of personality disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, and encourage further study of this neglected, often destructive, trait.

No abstract

The present article describes the development and initial validation of the Inventory of Microaggressions Against Black Individuals (IMABI) using a sample of 385 undergraduates who self-identified as Black or African American. The IMABI is a 14-item, unidimensional measure of racial microaggressions that captures both microinsults and microinvalidations. The present findings support the IMABI as a reliable and valid measure of microaggressions that was associated with general distress and perceived stress. Importantly, the association between the IMABI and psychological adjustment persisted even when social desirability and another measure of race-related stress were included in the analyses. Discussion focuses on the potential implications of the IMABI for understanding the daily experiences and psychological adjustment of Black individuals.

We examined positive and negative parenting practices and psychological control as mediators of the relations between constructive and destructive marital conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing problems in a unified model. Married mothers of 121 children between the ages of 6 and 12 completed questionnaires measuring marital conflict, parenting practices, and child adjustment. Analyses revealed significant direct paths from destructive marital conflict to negative parenting practices, psychological control, and both children's internalizing and externalizing behavior. In addition, psychological control was found to partially mediate relations between destructive marital conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior.

The current study examined factors that may serve as barriers to the success of ethnic minority graduate students by assessing the academic, social, and emotional experiences of approximately 87 ethnic minority and 313 ethnic majority school psychology graduate students. Results indicated that ethnic minority graduate students reported significantly more negative race-related experiences, which were associated with higher levels of emotional distress, than were ethnic majority graduate students. In addition, ethnic minority graduate students reported lower levels of belongingness than did ethnic majority students' and negative race-related experiences were associated with lower perceptions of belongingness across all participants. Belongingness and autonomy were significantly associated with self-reported academic engagement for both ethnic minority and majority students. Discussion focuses on the significance of racial microaggressions and belongingness to graduate students in school psychology programs. Developing methods to increase the number of ethnic minority school psychologists is critically important to the future of the profession (e.g., Davis, McIntosh, Phelps, & Kehle, 2004; Fagan, 1988). Survey data from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) for the 2004-2005 school year indicated that only 7.4% of school psychologists identified themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority group (Curtis et al., 2008). This is important because disparities between the ethnicities of school psychologists and the clients they serve may impair their ability to relate to their clients and provide appropriate services

No abstract