ERIC Number: EJ1481826
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Sep
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1363-755X
EISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
Available Date: 2025-07-22
Characterizing Within-Person Trajectories of Negative Affect across Adolescence: A Longitudinal Clustering Approach
Katherine A. Grisanzio1; Patrick Mair1; Leah H. Somerville1
Developmental Science, v28 n5 e70052 2025
While day-to-day negative affect normatively rises across adolescence, emotional experiences also stratify, or diverge, across individuals. Moreover, negative affect is not a unitary construct but comprises distinct feeling states (e.g., sadness, anger, anxiety), each characterized by distinct age-related trends. Yet, most developmental research relies on cross-sectional approaches and treats negative affect as a singular dimension, limiting insights into the granular, within-person "trajectories" of discrete negative affects across adolescence. In the current study, we aimed to characterize these trajectories using a three-wave longitudinal sample (spanning ~2.5 years, N = 251, aged 9-15 years at baseline) from the Human Connectome Project in Development for analysis. At each visit, participants completed self-report measures assessing different forms of negative affect--sadness, anger, evaluative anxiety, and general anxiety--and a range of social and global functional outcomes. Analyses revealed three distinct subgroups of adolescents--one whose daily negative affect was low and rose only modestly with age, one whose daily negative affect was moderate and rose more significantly with age, and one whose daily negative affect started high and continued to intensify with age. These clusters meaningfully differentiated on external functional outcome measures of social functioning and life satisfaction. Additionally, regression analyses revealed that slopes for specific negative affect types provided unique predictive value for certain outcomes, emphasizing the importance of preserving affective granularity in investigations of adolescent emotional experience. These findings help to refine theories of adolescent emotional development by revealing the specific negative affect trajectory patterns and discrete affect types most predictive of subsequent well-being.
Descriptors: Affective Behavior, Adolescents, Children, Psychological Patterns, Anxiety, Age Differences, Interpersonal Competence, Life Satisfaction, Emotional Development
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (NIH) (DHHS); National Science Foundation (NSF), Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: U01MH109589; U01MH109589S1; DGE1745303
Data File: URL: https://osf.io/35w9t
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Peer reviewed
Direct link
