Meredith McGinley

Acculturative Stress, Social Support, and Coping: Relations to Psychological Adjustment among Mexican American College Students

This study examined the relations between acculturative stress and psychological functioning, as well as the protective role of social support and coping style, in a sample of 148 Mexican American college students (67% female, 33% male; mean age = 23.05 years, SD = 3.33). In bivariate analyses, acculturative stress was associated with higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Moreover, active coping was associated with better adjustment (lower depression), whereas avoidant coping predicted poorer adjustment (higher levels of depression and anxiety). Tests of interaction effects indicated that parental support and active coping buffered the effects of high acculturative stress on anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms. In addition, peer support moderated the relation between acculturative stress and anxiety symptoms. Implications for reducing the effects of acculturative stress among Mexican American college students are discussed.

Two Sides of the Same Coin? The Relations between Prosocial and Physically Aggressive Behaviors

The direct and indirect relations between six types of prosocial behavior and physical aggression were examined. Data were gathered from 252 college students (M age = 21.67 years; 184 women) who completed measures of sympathy, prosocial behavior, and physical aggression. Structural equation modeling revealed that sympathy fully mediated the relations between compliant prosocial behaviors and physical aggression, and partially mediated the relations between altruism and physical aggression and public prosocial behaviors and physical aggression. The findings suggest that the relations between prosocial behaviors and aggression are complex and that prosocial behavior should not be treated as a unitary construct.

Do Sensitive Parents Foster Kind Children, or Vice Versa? Bidirectional Influences between Children's Prosocial Behavior and Parental Sensitivity.

Bidirectional theories of social development have been around for over 40 years (Bell, 1968), yet they have been applied primarily to the study of antisocial development. In the present study, the reciprocal relationship between parenting behavior and childrens socially competent behaviors were examined. Using the National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care data set (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005), bidirectional relationships between parental sensitivity and childrens prosocial behavior were modeled using latent variables in structural equation modeling for mothers and fathers, separately. Children and their parents engaged in structured interactions when children were 54-month-olds, 3rd graders, and 5th graders, and these interactions were coded for parental sensitivity. At 3rd, 5th, and 6th grades, teachers and parents reported on childrens prosocial behavior. Parental education and child gender were entered as covariates in the models. The results provide support for a bidirectional relationship between childrens prosocial behavior and maternal sensitivity (but not paternal sensitivity) in middle childhood. The importance of using a bidirectional approach to examine the development of social competence is emphasized.

The Roles of Parental Inductions, Moral Emotions, and Moral Cognitions in Prosocial Tendencies among Mexican American and European American Early Adolescents.

This study examined the relationships between parental inductions, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, and prosocial behaviors. A total of 207 early adolescents who self-identified as Mexican American (girls, n = 105; mean age = 10.91 years) and 108 who identified as European American (girls, n = 54; mean age = 11.07 years) completed measures of parental inductions, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, and six different types of prosocial behaviors. The findings showed that the correlates of prosocial behaviors were basically the same across the two ethnic groups, though there were some ethnic group differences in prosocial behaviors. Sympathy but not prosocial moral reasoning mediated the relationships between parental inductions and prosocial behaviors. Whereas sympathy was indirectly associated with all six types of prosocial behaviors, prosocial moral reasoning was associated with altruistic, anonymous, and public prosocial behaviors. As discussed in the article, findings further highlighted the ethnic group differences in prosocial behaviors and the distinct roles of sympathy and prosocial moral reasoning in prosocial development.

Empathy as a mediator of the relations between parent and peer attachment and prosocial and physically aggressive behaviors in Mexican American college students

Attachment and social support theories are normative developmental approaches that postulate positive social behavioral outcomes for individuals who develop strong relationships to parents and peers; however, research on positive aspects of Latinos in the United States is scarce. One hundred and forty-five Mexican American college students (M age = 23.05 years; 99 females) from state universities in the United States completed measures of parent and peer attachment, empathy, prosocial behaviors, and physical aggression. Structural equation models showed that both parent and peer attachments were associated with prosocial and physically aggressive behaviors. In general, empathy mediated the relations between peer attachment and both types of social behaviors but mostly for men and not women. Discussion focuses on the importance of attachment relationships and empathy in understanding prosocial and physically aggressive behaviors among Mexican American college students.

The protective role of prosocial behaviors on antisocial behaviors: the mediating effects of deviant peer affiliation.

Prosocial behaviors, actions intended to help others, may serve a protective function against association with deviant peers and subsequent delinquent and antisocial behaviors. The present study examined the relations among specific types of prosocial behaviors, deviant peer affiliation, and delinquent and aggressive behaviors. Six hundred and sixty-six adolescents (46% girls; M age = 15.33, SD = .47) from Valencia, Spain completed questionnaires of prosocial behaviors, affiliation with deviant peers, antisocial behaviors, and aggression. Results showed that antisocial behaviors were negatively related only to specific forms of prosocial behaviors. Further analyses showed that deviant peer affiliation mediated the relations between compliant prosocial behavior and delinquency and aggression. Although altruism was not directly related to delinquency and aggression, it was indirectly linked to the behaviors via deviant peer affiliation. Discussion focuses on the relevance of specific forms of prosocial behaviors to antisocial behaviors and the risk of deviant peers for prosocial youth.

Stressed and Helping: The Relations Among Acculturative Stress, Gender, and Prosocial Tendencies in Mexican Americans

ABSTRACT Available evidence suggests that stress is not necessarily linked to negative outcomes and, in fact, may lead to increases in sympathy and helping. In this study, we examined whether acculturative stress was associated with prosocial tendencies in a sample of 148 Mexican American college students (M age = 23.05 years; 99 women). Participants completed measures of acculturative stress, sympathy, and prosocial tendencies. The relations between acculturative stress and prosocial tendencies were generally positive but varied by the type of helping and gender. Higher levels of acculturative stress were linked to greater emotional, dire, compliant, and anonymous prosocial tendencies, as well as with fewer costly (altruistic) prosocial tendencies. Sympathy mediated the relations between acculturative stress and prosocial tendencies for men only.

Overt and Relational Victimization in Latinos and European Americans: Measurement Equivalence Across Ethnicity, Gender, and Grade Level in Early Adolescent Groups

This study examined the factorial invariance and construct validity equivalence of a self-report of victimization and exclusion (SVEX) for Latino and European American early adolescent participants (fifth and sixth grades; mean age 11.3).The instrument included an expanded set of relational victimization items that more thoroughly tapped exclusion behaviors relevant to developmental and cross-cultural use. Confirmatory factor analyses techniques demonstrated acceptable (partial) factorial invariance across ethnic groups, fifth and sixth graders, and across gender. Linkages between the SVEX scores, peer nominations, internalizing indices, and three demographic variables also supported construct validity equivalence for the SVEX. Findings supported a two-factor model similar to that of Crick and colleagues (e.g., Crick & Grotpeter, 1995) and suggested that the instrument provided an acceptable level of equivalence for overt and relational victimization forms across these groups.

Does Engaging in Prosocial Behavior Make Children See the World through Rose-Colored Glasses?.

Sparse research suggests that childrens social information processing has links not just with aggressive behavior but also with childrens prosocial behavior (e.g., Nelson & Crick, 1999). However, the past work that has been done has not been longitudinal, so the direction of links between social information processing and prosocial behavior remains unclear. In this study, we used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2010) to examine longitudinally the links between prosocial as well as aggressive behaviors and social information processing. Children completed multiple assessments of social information processing (including attribution biases and strategy response selection) from the 3rd to 5th grades. Mothers and teachers completed measures of childrens prosocial and aggressive behavior from the 3rd to 6th grades. Overall, the findings demonstrated that some of the links between social information processing and social behavior are bidirectional but that the direction of effects depends on when such links were assessed. At Grade 3, it was mostly childrens social behavior that predicted social information processing. At Grades 4 and 5, however, social information processing predicted childrens social behavior.

Measurement invariance in a measure of prosocial moral reasoning to use with adolescents from the USA and Brazil

Scholars have noted the need to examine the psychometric properties of measures that can be used in evaluating moral education programs. The present study was designed to examine the best‐fitting factor model of a commonly‐used measure of prosocial moral reasoning (PROM) across samples from Brazil and the USA, gender and adolescent age groups. The samples consisted of 619 college students (M age = 20.59 years, SD = 4.08; 41% men, 59% women) and 239 middle and high school students (M age = 14.02 years, SD = 3.04; 45% boys, 55% girls) from the USA. There were 114 college students (M age = 21.81, SD = 4.33; 35% men, 65% women) and 136 middle and high school students (M age = 14.93 years, SD = 1.55; 42% boys, 58% girls) from Brazil. A series of (multigroup) confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the best fitting factor structure of the PROM and the invariance of this factor structure across culture, gender and age groups. Evidence for measurement invariance was found such that a four‐factor model was a slightly better fitting model than the five‐factor model across all groups. Discussion focuses on theoretical and methodological implications of the findings.