Trajectories of temperament from late childhood through adolescence and associations with anxiety and depression in young adulthood

Abstract

Anxiety and depression are pervasive and pernicious mental health problems for young adults. Developmental trajectories of adolescent temperament (Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Positive Emotionality) may help us predict who will experience anxiety/depression during young adulthood. The present study used longitudinal data from a large, community sample of Mexican-origin youth ( N = 674) to examine how temperament develops across adolescence (age 10–16) and whether the developmental trajectories of temperament are associated with anxiety/depression during young adulthood (ages 19 and 21). Results indicate that Effortful Control, Negatively Emotionality, and the Affiliation facet of Positive Emotionality tend to decrease across adolescence, whereas Surgency tends to increase. Smaller decreases in Effortful Control and greater increases in Positive Emotionality across adolescence were associated with fewer anxiety/depression symptoms during young adulthood, whereas smaller decreases in Negative Emotionality were associated with more anxiety/depression symptoms later on. Thus, temperament development serves as both a protective factor (Effortful Control, Positive Emotionality) and a risk factor (Negative Emotionality) for later anxiety/depression in Mexican-origin youth.

Editorial: Youth personality development

“…The studies in the current special issue replicate and build on these earlier findings by mapping developmental patterns of temperament (Lawson et al, 2023), personality traits (de Moor et al, 2023; Li et al, 2023; Tetzner et al, 2023), and other conceptualizations of personality (self-esteem: Gonzalez Avilés et al, 2023; Scherrer et al, 2023; identity: Karataş et al, 2023; Timar-Anton et al, 2023; values: Bacchini et al, 2023; and prejudice: Bobba et al, 2023) across various cultural contexts. For example, the study by Avilés and colleagues examines average trends of self-esteem development among romantic late bloomers over a period of 10 years from adolescence till emerging adulthood (ages 16–26).…”

“…The special issue ends with a paper mapping typical development of early adolescent temperament in Mexican origin youth, and examining associations with anxiety/depression several years later (Lawson et al, 2023). Findings indicate that temperament development can serve as both a protective factor (Effortful Control, Positive Emotionality) and a risk factor (Negative Emotionality) for later anxiety/depression.…”

“…Overall, this special issue offers novel insights on youth personality development. The results on developmental patterns, predictors and mechanisms, and life outcomes provide a nuanced understanding on how youth from diverse European (Gonzalez Avilés et al, 2023; Bacchini et al, 2023; Bobba et al, 2023; De Moor et al, 2023; Karataş et al, 2023; Laceulle et al, 2023; Scherrer et al, 2023; Tetzner et al, 2023; Timar-Anton et al, 2023), American (Lawson et al, 2023), and Asian (Li et al, 2023) cultural contexts, develop in adolescence and in the transition to emerging adulthood. Importantly, this set of articles pave the way for more research that adopts integrative perspectives to further enrich a developmental understanding of youth personality.…”

The Development of Personality – from Metatraits to Facets – across Adolescence and into Adulthood in a Sample of Mexican-origin Youth

“…The dearth of facet-level research is especially stark for studies of personality development during emerging adulthood. Some work has investigated development of lower-order personality and temperament facets in childhood and adolescence (De Fruyt et al, 2006;Goldstein et al, 2022;Laceulle et al, 2012;Lawson et al, 2022;Zohar et al, 2019), but only one study has examined facet development during the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Klimstra et al, 2009(Klimstra et al, , 2018. Thus, for a comprehensive picture of personality development, we need to zoom out above the Big Five to account for broad, cross-cutting processes with metatraits and zoom in to the facet-level traits to identify more specific processes.…”

“…This project involves secondary data analysis of the California Families Project (CFP). Previous published work has used CFP data to examine associations between self-reported Big Five domains at ages 14 and 16 and the onset of suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts(Lawson et al, 2022). Another published study examined reciprocal relations between CFP youth (at ages 14 and 16) and their parent's self-reported Big Five domains and self-esteem(Weidmann et al, 2018).…”