Brett Laursen

Person-Centered and Variable-Centered Approaches to Longitudinal Data

As the number and scope of longitudinal investigations have expanded, so too have strategies for analyzing prospective data. Different analytic techniques are designed to answer different types of research questions. Person-centered approaches identify groups of individuals who share particular attributes or relations among attributes. They are well suited for addressing questions that concern group differences in patterns of development. Variable-centered approaches describe associations between variables. They are well suited for addressing questions that concern the relative contributions that predictor variables make to an outcome. This special issue includes conceptual essays and empirical reports designed to demonstrate the complementary strengths of these two different approaches. The articles illustrate how the integration of person-oriented and variable-oriented approaches can lead to a more complete understanding of the processes and patterns of human development.

Changing Relationships, Changing Youth Interpersonal Contexts of Adolescent Development

In the past quarter century, research on adolescence has expanded from a near exclusive focus on intraindividual processes to a concern with individuals in an interpersonal context. Today, studies of the impact of relationships within families, with peers, and with romantic partners account for a large proportion of research in the field. This article outlines three features of this transformation: an increasing focus on the nature of, changes in, and the developmental impact of adolescents’ relationships with significant others; the expansion and diversification of networks of significant others during adolescence; and the recognition of significant interrelations among these relationships. Contemporary studies require research designs that encompass multiple significant relationships and that assess a broad range of relationship properties.

Trajectories of Social Withdrawal from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence

Heterogeneity and individual differences in the developmental course of social withdrawal were examined longitudinally in a community sample (N = 392). General Growth Mixture Modeling (GGMM) was used to identify distinct pathways of social withdrawal, differentiate valid subgroup trajectories, and examine factors that predicted change in trajectories within subgroups. Assessments of individual (social withdrawal), interactive (prosocial behavior), relationship (friendship involvement, stability and quality, best friend’s withdrawal and exclusion/victimization) and group- (exclusion/victimization) level characteristics were used to define growth trajectories from the final year of elementary school, across the transition to middle school, and then to the final year of middle school (fifth-to-eighth grades). Three distinct trajectory classes were identified: low stable, increasing, and decreasing. Peer exclusion, prosocial behavior, and mutual friendship involvement differentiated class membership. Friendlessness, friendship instability, and exclusion were significant predictors of social withdrawal for the increasing class, whereas lower levels of peer exclusion predicted a decrease in social withdrawal for the decreasing class.

A Developmental Guide to the Organisation of Close Relationships

A developmental guide to close relationships is presented. Parent-child, sibling, friend, and romantic relationships are described along dimensions that address permanence, power, and gender. These dimensions describe relationship differences in organisational principles that encompass internal representations, social understanding, and interpersonal experiences. The concept of domain specificity is borrowed from cognitive development to address the shifting developmental dynamics of close relationships. Distinct relationships are organised around distinct socialisation tasks, so each relationship requires its own organisational system. As a consequence, different principles guide different relationships, and these organisational principles change with development.

Adolescent Intimacy Revisited

Two studies examined intimacy in adolescent friendships. In the first, 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students completed a questionnaire assessing perceived friendship intimacy. Age and sex differences were identified in emotional closeness, self-disclosure, emphasis on individuality, control, and conformity. Across ages, emphasis on individuality increased, whereas control and conformity declined. There were no age differences in emotional closeness and self-disclosure. Females reported more emotional closeness and self-disclosure than males. In the second study, individual differences in friendship intimacy were examined in a sample of 9th-grade adolescents. A joint problem solving task identified interdependent and disengaged friends. Perceived intimacy among interdependent and disengaged friends was contrasted with that in a control group of subjects without friends. Adolescents with friends reported more closeness than those without friends. Interdependent friends reported greater levels of respect for individuality than disengaged friends. The results underscore the salience of intimacy for peer relationships during the adolescent years and suggest that intimacy may be an important construct distinguishing between different types of close friendships.

Pressure to Drink but Not to Smoke: Disentangling Selection and Socialization in Adolescent Peer Networks and Peer Groups.

This paper examined the relative influence of selection and socialization on alcohol and tobacco use in adolescent peer networks and peer groups. The sample included 1419 Finnish secondary education students (690 males and 729 females, mean age 16 years at the outset) from nine schools. Participants identified three school friends and described their alcohol and tobacco use on two occasions one year apart. Actor-based models simultaneously examined changes in peer network ties and changes in individual behaviors for all participants within each school. Multi-level analyses examined changes in individual behaviors for adolescents entering new peer groups and adolescents in stable peer groups, both of which were embedded within the school-based peer networks. Similar results emerged from both analytic methods: Selection and socialization contributed to similarity of alcohol use, but only selection was a factor in tobacco use.

Adolescent perceptions of friendship and their associations with individual adjustment

This study of 282 dyads examines early- and mid-adolescents’ perceptions of friendship quality and their association with daily disagreements, self- and mother reports of behaviour problems, and school grades. Actor and partner analyses identify unique associations between perceptions of friendship quality and perceptions of daily conflict. Actor effects reveal links between friendship negativity and self-perceptions of conflict affective intensity, relationship impact, post-conflict interaction, and post-conflict separation, and between friendship positivity and self-perceptions of relationship impact. Partner effects reveal links between friendship negativity and partner perceptions of conflict outcomes. Perceptions of relationship quality were also associated with self- and mother reports of behaviour problems and with school grades, such that individual and dyadic views of friendship negativity were linked to detrimental outcomes. The worst outcomes tended to be reserved for dyads in which one or both friends reported high levels of relationship negativity.

The antecedents and correlates of agreeableness in adulthood.

Data from a 25-year prospective study of 194 individuals indicated that teacher and peer reports of aggression, compliance, and self-control at age 8 distinguished high-agreeable from low-agreeable adults at age 33. Profile analyses revealed two behavioral types in childhood and two personality types in adulthood, with considerable continuity in the composition of these high- and low-agreeable types over time. High-agreeable childhood types had fewer disobedience and concentration problems than low-agreeable childhood types, and among boys, high-agreeable childhood types had better school grades and fewer behavior problems than their low-agreeable counterparts. High-agreeable adulthood types reported less alcoholism and depression, fewer arrests, and more career stability than did low-agreeable adulthood types.

Dyadic and group perspectives on close relationships

Recent advances in the study of close relationships hold the potential for new insignts into the significance of interdependence and the mechanism of relationship influence. The papers in this special issue apply two new data analytic techniques to the study of family and friend relationships. The Actor–Partner Interdependence Model incorporates the perspectives of both participants in a dyad into analyses that describe shared and unique views of the relationship. The Social Relations Model incorporates the perspectives of all members of a group into analyses that ascribe views unique to individuals and relationships, and views shared by the entire group. Developmental applications of techniques originally designed for concurrent interdependent data are described with the aim of advancing these analytic procedures to the study of lifespan human development.

Friend Influence over Adolescent Problem Behaviors as a Function of Relative Peer Acceptance: To be Liked is to be Emulated

Friend influence over alcohol intoxication and delinquent behavior was examined as a function of relative peer acceptance in a 3-year study of Swedish youth (N = 184 girls, 145 boys). Participants were in the first year of secondary school (7th grade, M = 11.7 years old) or the first year of high school (10th grade, M = 15.3 years old) at the outset. Friends resembled one another before the friendship; resemblances were even greater after the friendship began. Resemblances continued to grow among those who remained friends one year later, but declined among those whose friendships dissolved. Partners were not equally responsible for increases in similarity. In stable friendships, the more accepted partner exerted greater influence over the less accepted partner, such that the greatest increases in problem behaviors were found among less accepted youth whose friends had higher initial levels of delinquency and alcohol intoxication. Unstable friends resembled random pairs of youth in that more- and less-accepted partners were comparably uninfluential.