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Moral disengagement (MD) has been consistently associated with antisocial behavior (ASB) in prior research. Limited research tested the directionality of the bivariate relationship, and most studies focused only on the direction of MD predicting ASB, even though ASB could also influence MD based on the literature on attribution and behavioral influence on attitude. Moreover, the few studies testing reciprocal associations rarely controlled for stable individual differences and did not explicitly examine the age effect to allow for a clear developmental inference. We analyzed age-based self-report antisocial behavior and moral disengagement data across ages 16–23 from 1,349 juvenile offenders (86.43% male; 20.31% White, 41.29% Black, 33.65% Hispanic) in the Pathways to Desistance Project using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model. Controlling for stable individual differences in MD and ASB and their associations along with the autoregressive effects, there was a reciprocal relationship between MD and ASB from ages 16 to 18. However, from ages 19 to 21, only ASB significantly predicted MD in the following year. There was no significant cross-lagged effect from ages 21 to 23. Our findings highlight the dynamic relationship between MD and ASB from ages 16 to 23. Youth between 16 and 18 years old may be more pliable to change with treatment/intervention due to the two-way traffic of cognition and behavior, but we also caution against treatment efforts with a heavy focus on proactive criminal thinking involving moral disengagement to reduce offending behavior beyond age 18. Public Significance Statement: The mutual influences of MD and ASB from age 16 to 18 suggest that youth at these ages are more pliable to change, and the two-way traffic in their cognition and behavior may be opportune for intervention to start a positive feedback loop. Because of the lack of effect of MD on ASB beyond age 18, we caution against treatment efforts with a heavy focus on proactive criminal thinking (e.g., moral disengagement) to reduce offending behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the heightened difficulties in social adjustment and the potential diminishment of social networks encountered by migrant children, family functioning may play a crucial role in their development. Existing research has highlighted the significance of family environment in shaping adolescent self-compassion and emotion regulation, which can serve as protective factors against adverse emotional outcomes. However, there remains a lack of comparative studies to examine the specific effects of family functioning on fostering self-compassion and emotion regulation in both migrant and their non-migrant counterparts. The present study utilized a three-wave longitudinal design with 12-month intervals to examine the longitudinal effects of family functioning on self-compassion and emotion regulation, while also examining potential variations in these associations between migrant and non-migrant children. A total of 244 migrant children and 491 non-migrant children from a high school in Guangdong Province (357 females; Mage = 15.3 at Time 1, SDage = 0.53) participated in this study. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) were utilized to examine the longitudinal associations among family functioning, self-compassion, and emotion regulation in both groups. The results showed that, at the within-person level, family functioning reciprocally predicted self-compassion over time among migrant children, and it also exerted an indirect effect on emotion regulation, mediated by self-compassion. Among non-migrant children, emotion regulation positively predicted self-compassion over time, with no other observed cross-lagged effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood is a critical period for the development of prosocial behavior, and the family serves as a crucial microsystem for fostering prosocial behavior in children. Prior research has indicated that parental monitoring, a specific family factor directly targeting children, can predict children’s prosocial behavior. However, the influence of the overall family climate on children’s prosocial behavior remains unclear. This study focuses on different levels of family factors and examines the dynamic longitudinal effects of both parental monitoring and family conflict, simultaneously, on children’s prosocial behavior. Three-wave data from 4,691 children (M baseline age = 9.480, SD = .507; 48.2% female) in the ABCD database were analyzed. The results of the cross-lagged panel model revealed significant longitudinal mutual predictive relations among family conflict, parental monitoring, and children’s prosocial behavior. After disentangling between-person associations, the findings from the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model showed that increasing parental monitoring consistently predicted future increases in child prosocial behavior from childhood to early adolescence, and reducing family conflict significantly predicted future increases in prosocial behavior during early adolescence. These findings underscore the importance of considering not only specific family factors that directly target the child, but also holistic family factors such as family conflict in shaping positive child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study investigated the longitudinal effects between adolescent emotional self-regulation and prosocial behavior toward powerful people (i.e., actions aimed at benefiting or supporting individuals who hold significant influence or authority within a group or society), based on the perspective of positive socialization cycle., Methods: We recruited 543 Chinese adolescents (284 girls, M age at Time 1  = 11.27 years) and collected three waves of data over 3 years, each approximately 1 year apart (n Time 2  = 449, n Time 3  = 417). Traditional cross-lagged panel model was conducted to test the longitudinal relationship between emotional self-regulation and prosocial behavior toward powerful people. Then, a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model was performed to disentangle the between-person differences from the within-person predictive processes., Results: The results showed that, emotional self-regulation in the previous year was positively associated with prosocial behavior toward powerful people in the next year, whereas earlier prosocial behavior toward powerful people was not predictive of subsequent emotional self-regulation., Conclusions: Findings advocate the domain-specific nature of self-regulation and prosocial behavior and deepen our understanding of the relationship between the two from the culture-specific perspective. This study also highlights the value of emotional self-regulation intervention as a viable way to promote adolescent prosocial development. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed., (© 2024 Foundation for Professionals in Services to Adolescents.)

Background: The purported reciprocity between motivation and academic achievement in education has largely been supported by correlational data., Aims: Our first aim was to determine experimentally whether motivation and achievement are reciprocally related. The second objective was to investigate a potential behavioural mediation pathway between motivation and achievement by measuring the objective effort expended on learning. Finally, we studied the causality of these relations by analysing the dynamics between motivation and achievement (rather than examining them as individual constructs) when perceived achievement was experimentally manipulated., Sample(s): The study employed a short-timeframe experiment in which 309 Dutch undergraduate students (M age  = 19.89, SD = 2.08) learned new English vocabulary., Methods: Their motivation, effort, and achievement were measured at multiple time points within one hour. Midway through the experiment, participants received manipulated feedback indicating an achievement decline, which was expected to influence their subsequent motivation, effort, and actual achievement. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel framework was employed to model how one construct influenced another over time., Results: We found a unilateral effect of achievement on motivation (i.e., no reciprocity), which remained stable across the time points. Our experimental manipulation partially supported a causal interpretation of the unilateral achievement→motivation pathway. Additionally, no mediation effect of effort was identified: motivation was not associated with effort, nor was effort linked to achievement., Conclusions: Our findings underscore the importance of further exploration of behavioural mediation pathways, a broad operationalization of motivation, and the application of appropriate modelling strategies to investigate the motivation-achievement reciprocity., (© 2025 The Author(s). British Journal of Educational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.)