Friendships are important sources of support during adolescence. However, a growing literature indicates some adolescents co-ruminate, or talk with friends about problems in a way that is excessive, speculative, and negatively focused, which confers risk for internalizing problems. Still, previous research had not examined the types of problems…

Indirect aggression has been associated with antisocial personality traits like Machiavellianism, but there is a lack of evidence on their longitudinal development across adolescence. Therefore, the joint developmental trajectories of adolescent indirect aggression and Machiavellianism across 3 years of high school (Grades 10 to 12) were…

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.…

Co-rumination is a dyadic process between relationship partners that refers to excessively discussing problems, rehashing problems, speculating about problems, mutual encouragement of problem talk, and dwelling on negative affect. Although studies have addressed youths' "tendency" to co-ruminate, little is known about the nature of…

The self-equilibrium hypothesis underlines the importance of having a strong core self, which is defined as a high and developmentally stable self-concept. This study tested this hypothesis in relation to body image (BI) trajectories in a sample of 1,006 adolescents (M[subscript age] = 12.6, including 541 males and 465 females) across a 4-year…

Early-maturing girls are at risk for internalizing and externalizing problems. Research concerning pubertal timing and mental health among Mexican Americans or the influence of parenting behaviors on these relations has been scarce. This study addressed these gaps. This was a prospective examination of 362 Mexican-origin girls and their mothers in…

In the current study, based on a sample of 1,873 adolescents between 11.4 and 20.9 years of age from the first 3 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we investigated the longitudinal effects of future orientation on levels of and developmental changes in problem behaviors, while controlling for the effects by impulsivity;…

Family conflict is a salient risk factor for African American adolescents' mental health problems. No study we are aware of has estimated trajectories of their family conflict and whether groups differ in internalizing and externalizing problems during the transition to young adulthood, a critical antecedent in adult mental health and…

Guided by a risk and resilience framework, the current study examined the associations between Latino adolescents' ("n" = 219; "M" [subscript age] = 14.35; "SD" = 1.75) perceptions of ethnic discrimination in multiple settings (e.g., online, school) and several domains of adjustment (e.g., mental health, academic),…

Analyzing problem-behavior trajectories can be difficult. The data are generally categorical and often quite skewed, violating distributional assumptions of standard normal-theory statistical models. In this article, the authors present several currently available modeling options, all of which make appropriate distributional assumptions for the…

Parental monitoring, assessed as (perceived) parental knowledge of the child's behavior, has been established as a consistent predictor of problem behavior. However, recent research indicates that parental knowledge has more to do with adolescents' self-disclosure than with parents' active monitoring. Although these findings may suggest that…