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This authoritative handbook is the reference of choice for researchers and students of personality. Leading authorities describe the most important theoretical approaches in personality and review the state of the science in five broad content areas: biological bases; development; self and social processes; cognitive and motivational processes; and emotion, adjustment, and health. Within each area, chapters present innovative ideas, findings, research designs, and measurement approaches. Areas of integration and consensus are discussed, as are key questions and controversies still facing the

How Latino youth cope with stressors may have implications for their adjustment. We examined how a temperamental characteristic (effortful control) and a contextual factor (economic hardship) were associated with Latino youth's coping. Individual differences in effortful control, a core facet of self‐regulation, may contribute to coping as effortful control is consistently linked to adaptive behaviors during adolescence. We examined relations of effortful control and economic hardship to active coping in a sample of Mexican‐origin youth (N = 674) across three time points (fifth to ninth grades). Although economic hardship negatively predicted coping and effortful control, effortful control positively predicted coping (controlling for prior levels). Findings support a resilience perspective by suggesting that effortful control may contribute to coping and thus counteract the negative effects of economic hardship.

Substance use initiation in adolescence is a critical issue, given its association with substance dependency and associated problems in adulthood. However, due to the dearth of fine‐grained longitudinal studies, the factors associated with early initiation are poorly understood, especially in minority youth. The present study examined substance use initiation in a sample ofMexican‐origin youth (n = 674) assessed annually from age 10 to 16. Using discrete‐time survival analyses, we found that initiation escalated rapidly from late childhood to adolescence, and we identified a wide range of factors, from the individual to the cultural level of analysis, that significantly increased or decreased risk for early initiation. These findings have important implications for programs aimed at preventing early substance use by Mexican‐origin youth.

ObjectiveTo investigate the trajectories of culturally specific predictors of parenting practices in Latinx families: familism (familísmo), respect (respéto), traditional gender role attitudes (machísmo and marianísmo), and the degree to which these parental cultural values predict changes in parenting practices.BackgroundCultural values have been suggested to predict Latinx parenting practices, but there is a paucity of direct evidence. The current study fills the gap by testing such associations using corresponding measures.MethodWe followed 549 Mexican‐origin families from when the adolescents (52% female) were in the fifth to eleventh grade. Parental authoritativeness, monitoring, and hostility were reported by multiple informants. Growth curve modeling was used.ResultsMost trajectories of these parental cultural values showed small but significant declines during offspring adolescence, particularly when adolescent use of Spanish or parent–adolescent conflict was high. Parental cultural values predicted changes in parenting practices in four of 36 models, wherein initial paternal familísmo predicted decrease in paternal authoritativeness toward daughters, initial maternal traditional gender values predicted decrease in maternal hostility toward daughters, and initial parental traditional gender values predicted decrease in parental monitoring of sons.ConclusionAlthough parental cultural values do not consistently predict changes in parenting practices, parental cultural values decrease with specific groups during specific times (i.e., during adolescence, especially in families with high parent–adolescent conflict or wherein the adolescent uses Spanish frequently).ImplicationsMore attention to measured constructs in research on Latinx families and validity of parenting is required. Research on nuanced or lower order components of acculturation is needed.

This study examined factors that relate to academic competence and expectations from elementary to middle school for 674 fifth‐grade students (50% boys; Mage = 10.86 years) of Mexican origin. Models predicting academic competence and expectations were estimated using a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework, with longitudinal data from fifth to eighth grades. School belonging (i.e., social and emotional connectedness to school) predicted greater academic competence and expectations over time. Findings indicate that student feelings of belonging in school may act as a resource that promotes academic competence and expectations. Furthermore, family income, parent education, and generational status had direct effects on academic competence and expectations to some degree, suggesting the importance of contextual factors in this process.

The primary goal of this study was to test how mother and adolescent proficiency in a common language moderates the link from parenting to adolescent development. A sample of Mexican‐origin fifth‐grade adolescents (N = 674, 50% female) was measured longitudinally on self‐control and aggression. Mothers were rated on observed positive discipline, warmth, and harsh discipline. Positive discipline and warm parenting predicted increases in self‐control and decreases in aggression, but only among mother–adolescent dyads who were proficient in a common language. Harsh parenting predicted decreases in self‐control and increases in aggression, but only among dyads who were not proficient in a common language. Similar results were found in a conceptual replication among a second sample of 167 Mexican‐origin adolescents.

Models of the etiology of adolescent antisocial behavior suggest that externalizing problems may reflect a susceptibility to crime exposure and a diminished capacity for emotion introspection. In this study, adolescents of Mexican origin completed a neuroimaging task that involved rating their subjective feelings of sadness in response to emotional facial expressions or a nonemotional aspect of each face. At lower levels of neural activity during sadness introspection in posterior cingulate and left temporoparietal junction, and in left amygdala, brain regions involved in mentalizing and emotion, respectively, a stronger positive association between community crime exposure and externalizing problems was found. The specification of emotion introspection as a psychological process showing neural variation may help inform targeted interventions to positively affect adolescent behavior.

The present study examined adolescents' neural responses to social exclusion as a mediator of past exposure to a hostile school environment (HSE) and later social deviance, and whether family connectedness buffered these associations. Participants (166 Mexican‐origin adolescents, 54.4% female) reported on their HSE exposure and family connectedness across Grades 9–11. Six months later, neural responses to social exclusion were measured. Finally, social deviance was self‐reported in Grades 9 and 12. The HSE–social deviance link was mediated by greater reactivity to social deviance in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, a region from the social pain network also implicated in social susceptibility. However, youths with stronger family bonds were protected from this neurobiologically mediated path. These findings suggest a complex interplay of risk and protective factors that impact adolescent behavior through the brain.