Research suggests a link between precocious transitions to adulthood (e.g., high school dropout) and maladaptation, and this association is typically assumed to be uniform. We propose that this monolithic portrayal of precocious transitions as problematic for adult functioning is unwarranted, particularly across identities defined by gender,…

The use of the mobile Internet continues to play an increasing role in all of our lives and particularly in the lives of college and university students. Questions have been raised about the impact of the Internet on adolescents' and college students' fulfillment of traditional developmental tasks and more broadly their mental health. The present…

Home-leaving is considered an important marker of the transition to adulthood and is usually framed as an individual decision. We move beyond this limited assumption to examine a broader conceptualization that might better illuminate home-leaving among youth in impoverished circumstances. We adopt the Problem Behavior Theory-framework to…

In the current study, we explored patterns of change in Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs during the transition to adulthood, assessed neighborhood racial composition effects on Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs, and tested the moderating effects of neighborhood racial composition on the associations between Black…

Although drinking motives have been largely studied, research taking into account the Mediterranean drinking culture and focusing on motives specifically associated to adolescents' developmental tasks is lacking. For these reasons the study investigates drinking motives in a group of Italian adolescents and their relationships with drunkenness and…

Establishing life purpose is a key developmental task; however, how it is linked to adolescents' everyday family, school, extracurricular, and leisure experiences remains unclear. Using daily diary data from 180 Asian American ninth and tenth graders (50% ninth; 58% female; 25% first generation), daily purpose was positively related to daily…

Previous studies of childhood fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour have been limited by restricted age ranges, narrow ranges of anxiety phenomena, non-comparable methodologies, and assessment of typical behaviour within a pathological context. Content and intensity of fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour, and associations among these…

Identity is a major developmental task for adolescents, and the development of ethnic identity is a unique and significant developmental task for many adolescents. This article reviews theoretical and empirical literature that informs our understanding of the development of a positive ethnic identity, and the consequences for adolescent mental…

In this paper, we review findings from Project Competence on the nature of personality development from middle childhood through the early adult years and place these findings in the context of current research on temperament and personality traits. In a series of studies using data drawn from the Project Competence longitudinal project, we have…