Lauri A. Jensen-Campbell - US grants

Interpersonal conflict is an inevitable part of life and may have important developmental consequences. Conflicts are not exclusively negative events and can have both positive and negative outcomes for children and adolescents. An important question involves what factors make conflicts either positive or negative events. This multi-method, multi-phase study will look at possible factors that affect the positive and negative impact of conflict on interpersonal adjustment. First, children will be asked to provide self-descriptions using computers. Second, teachers and parents will give their assessment of the children. Finally, children will be put into a conflictual situation and videotaped to measure children's actual on-line responses to conflict. Observations of conflict behavior among 5th and 6th grade children will be related to computer-based self-reports, parent ratings, and teacher ratings, to examine hypotheses about links among personality, interpersonal conflict, and interpersonal adjustment. It is expected that interpersonally oriented personality characteristics like agreeableness will moderate children's perceptions about conflict, as well as strategic and tactical choices for conflict participants. Moreover, it is expected that agreeableness differences and use of destructive tactics in conflict will be significantly related to self- concepts and parent- and teacher-rated interpersonal adjustment. Past research has shown that agreeableness is related to the motivation to avoid relationship-threatening tactics. This research, however, was entirely self-report. Observations of children in actual conflicts will increase understanding of the links among agreeableness, conflict behavior, and adjustment. First, it will help determine the sequence of behaviors that occur within actual conflicts. Second, it will link children's perceptions of conflict events to the actual on-line conflict behavior. Third, this study will probe the convergence between child, teacher, and parent ratings of personality during late childhood. Fourth, this study will link a child's endorsement of conflict tactics to their actual on-line use of such tactics. Finally, the links between personality and conflict behavior with overall adjustment will be examined. If agreeableness differences moderate the negative impact of actual on-line conflicts and are related to interpersonal adjustment as rated by adults, it will suggest that studying the development and generality of agreeableness differences may be very important for understanding interpersonal adjustment processes. Moreover knowing what factors negatively affect interpersonal adjustment may aid in the development of interventions that target these factors.

Self-regulation is associated with inhibiting actions an individual may otherwise be inclined to perform. Poor self-regulation has been linked to failure to control emotions, alcohol abuse, addictions, overeating, behavioral control problems (e.g., aggressive behavior), and victimization. Interestingly, previous research has focused on either young children or adults. However, the pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain believed to be responsible for impulse control and self-regulation, continues to develop throughout adolescence. The present research focuses on adolescents aged 10-14. The study specifically examines individual differences in adolescent self-regulation that promote long-term social outcomes and the possible underlying neural mechanisms that are implicated in these differences by employing physiological measures as a source of data about the individual. Two fundamental questions will be addressed: (1) Are agreeableness and conscientiousness related to effortful control processes in adolescence?; and (2) Are agreeableness and conscientiousness predictive of psychosocial adjustment in adolescence? It is anticipated that agreeableness and conscientiousness will be directly related to traditional cognitive assessments associated with impairments in self-regulation. Adolescents higher in agreeableness and conscientiousness will score higher on these traditional cognitive assessments and will have greater physiological reactivity while performing these cognitive tasks than will persons lower in agreeableness and conscientiousness. In addition, adolescents lower in agreeableness and conscientiousness will exhibit more behaviors associated with poor self-regulation than will their peers. Overall, this study will provide converging data between child and parent reports about personality and behaviors associated with self-regulation on an age group that is often neglected in self-regulation research. Second, this study will link personality to behavioral observations and physiological responses associated with self-regulation. Third, this study will examine whether personality and self-regulation are predictive of adjustment in adolescence. Finally, this study will lay groundwork for future research that will examine the possible developmental transitions related to personality and self-regulation during adolescence. If we can understand how personality is linked to control processes, we may then be able to understand what factors affect development and psychosocial adjustment negatively in adolescents.