The Development of Respect in Children and Adolescents

Observing prosociality and talent: the emotional characteristics and behavioral outcomes of elevation and admiration in 6.5- to 8.5-year-old children

Helping and seeing others being helped elicits positive emotions in young children but little is known about the nature of these emotions, especially in middle childhood. Here we examined the specific emotional characteristics and behavioral outcomes of two closely related other-praising moral emotions: elevation and admiration. We exposed 182 6.5- to 8.5-year-old children living in New Zealand, to an elevation- and admiration-inducing video clip. Afterwards children's emotion experiences and prosocial behaviour was measured. Findings revealed higher levels of happiness, care, and warmth after seeing prosociality in others (elevation condition) and higher levels of upliftment after seeing talent in others (admiration condition). We found no differences in prosocial behavior between the elevation and admiration conditions. This is the first study to assess elevation in childhood and offers a novel paradigm to investigate the role of moral emotions as potential motivators underlying helping.

Creating A child-friendly social environment for fewer conduct problems and more prosocial behaviors among children: A LASSO regression approach

BACKGROUND

Creating a child-friendly social environment is an important component of promoting child-friendly city development. This study aims to explore the key indicators of friendly family, school and community social environments from the perspective of children's conduct problems and prosocial behaviors.

METHOD

The sample included grade 3-5 students from one public elementary school in the urban areas and another public elementary school in the rural areas of a Chinese city pursuing a child-friendly philosophy. A total of 418 participants were included in this study. Data on conduct problems, prosocial behaviors and the social environment were collected. To effectively select important variables and eliminate estimation bias, this study used LASSO regression to identify key indicators predicting children's conduct problems and prosocial behavior, followed by linear regression coefficient estimation and significance testing.

RESULTS

Creating a friendly family environment (ensuring family members' assistance with academic problems) and school environment (reducing cheating, fighting, and unfriendly teacher language) was associated with reduced conduct problems in children. Creating a positive family atmosphere (enhancing children's trust in family members), school environment (increasing parents' awareness of school affairs, reinforcing students' prosocial behavior, increasing extracurricular activity programs, and encouraging student engagement in academics) and community environment (respecting all children in the community) was associated with improving children's prosocial behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

This study transforms the multidimensional, complex child-friendly social environment evaluation indicator system into concise and specific measurement indicators, which can provide theoretical and practical implications for government decision-making in child-friendly city development through empirical research.

Auditing the impact of artificial intelligence on the ability to have a good life: using well-being measures as a tool to investigate the views of undergraduate STEM students

AI/ML increasingly impacts the ability of humans to have a good life. Various sets of indicators exist to measure well-being/the ability to have a good life. Students play an important role in AI/ML discussions. The purpose of our study using an online survey was to learn about the perspectives of undergraduate STEM students on the impact of AI/ML on well-being/the ability to have a good life. Our study revealed that many of the abilities participants perceive to be needed for having a good life were part of the well-being/ability to have a good life indicator lists we gave to participants. Participants perceived AI/ML to have and continue to have the most positive impact on the ability to have a good life for disabled people, elderly people, and individuals with a high income and the least positive impact for people of low income and countries from the global south. Regarding indicators of well-being and the ability to have a good life given to participants, we found a significant techno-positive sentiment. 30% of respondents selected the purely positive box for 28 of the indicators and none did so for the purely negative box. For 52 indicators, the purely negative was below 10% (not counting the 0%) and for 10 indicators, none selected purely negative. Our findings suggest that our questions might be valuable tools to develop an inventory of STEM and other students' perspectives on the implications of AI/ML on the ability to have a good life.

Auditing the ‘Social’ of Quantum Technologies: A Scoping Review

Various phrases such as “social implications”, social impact” and “ethical, legal and social implications” are used to indicate the impact of a given scientific or technological advancements on the ‘social’. The impact on the ‘social’ is one focus of science and technology governance discussions. Many terms and phrases can be used to audit the engagement of a given technology (such as quantum technologies) with the ‘social’. Marginalized groups are particularly impacted by the ‘social’. Equity, Diversity, and, Inclusion (EDI) and similar phrases are part of discussing the ‘social’. EDI frameworks and phrases are employed as policy concepts to decrease the research, education, and general workplace problems members of marginalized groups such as women, Indigenous peoples, visible/racialized minorities, disabled people, and LGBTQ2S+ encounter at universities and other workplaces. How quantum technologies-focused discussions engage with the ‘social’ can impact EDI activities, and quantum technologies-focused discussions can be impacted in turn by EDI activities. The objective of this study was to map the engagement with the ‘social’ in the quantum technologies-focused academic literature. A scoping review coupled with a manifest coding approach was used to answer three research questions: (1) Which terms, phrases, and measures that can be seen to cover aspects of the ‘social’ are present in the quantum technologies-focused academic literature? (2) To what extent are EDI frameworks and phrases present in the quantum technologies-focused academic literature? (3) Which marginalized groups visible in EDI discourses are covered in the quantum technologies-focused academic literature? Using the academic databases SCOPUS, EBSCO-HOST, Web of Science, Compendex, Inspec Archive, and Knovel, 362,728 English language abstracts were obtained for the manifest coding using 62 Quantum-related technical phrases and 1062 English language abstracts were obtained using 17 non-technical Quantum-related phrases. Within the 362,728 abstracts of the 200 terms and phrases (which did not have to contain the term “social”) used to answer the research questions, 87 were not mentioned in any abstracts, 47 were mentioned in less than 10, 30 were mentioned in between 10 and 100, and 29 were mentioned in over 100 abstracts. Within the 1062 abstracts, 164 terms and phrases were not mentioned at all, 19 were mentioned in over 10, 8 were mentioned in between 10 and 100 (all false positive), and one was mentioned in over 100 abstracts (false positive). The term “social” or phrases containing “social” appeared in only 867 of the 362,728 abstracts and only 10 of the 1062 abstracts. EDI frameworks and phrases were not present in the 362,728 abstracts and 1062 abstracts, and many marginalized groups engaged with in EDI discussions were not present in the 362,728 and 1062 abstracts either. The results reveal vast opportunities to engage with the ‘social’ of quantum technologies in many different ways, including through EDI frameworks and concepts and by engaging with marginalized groups covered under EDI.

Moral Development in Adolescence

This article provides a selective review of research on moral development in adolescence during the past decade. We begin with introducing key concepts and reviewing critical theoretical advances in the field of adolescent moral development. This includes integrative models to the developmental study of morality and dynamic socialization models of moral development. Next, related major empirical findings are presented on moral emotion-behavior links, morality in intergroup contexts, and the socialization of moral development. Next, methodological innovations are presented, including new techniques to assess and analyze moral emotions and moral behaviors. We conclude by pointing to promising future directions for moral development research and practices aimed at promoting ethical growth and civic responsibility in adolescents around the globe.

Latinx Adolescents' Assets, Risks, and Developmental Pathways: A Decade in Review and Looking Ahead

I selectively review the last decade of theory and research on Latinx adolescents and emerging adults' development. After briefly reviewing the changing demographics of US Latinx families, I address: (1) asset-based theories of Latinx youth's development; (2) the literature on the educational pathways of US Latinx youth; (3) how close relationships, ethnic/racial (ERI) identity, and family, school, and community context promote or constrain Latinx youth's educational and positive development and provide examples of successful interventions to promote ERI and academic adjustment. I conclude with suggestions for scholarship in the next decade, including applying intersectional, interdisciplinary, biopsychosocial, and international lenses to studying Latinx youth, researching father involvement, and addressing between- and within-country of origin variations in Latinx youth's education and development.

Toward complementarity: Specificity and commonality in social-emotional development: Introduction to the special section

What are the roles of specificity and commonality in social-emotional development? We begin by highlighting the conceptual context for this timely and timeless question and explain how responses to it can inform novel lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry, as well as sociocultural generalizability. Next, we describe how the selection of papers included in this special section contributes to our understanding of specificity and commonality in social-emotional development. We then explain how applying the complementarity principle to social-emotional development can inform a future research agenda in this domain. Lastly, we discuss how specificity and commonality fundamentally impact the way we conceptualize and implement interventions aimed at nurturing social-emotional development in every child.

Building an assessment of community-defined social-emotional competencies from the ground up in Tanzania

Two studies were conducted in 2017 to investigate children's competencies seen as important by communities in Mtwara, Tanzania. Qualitative data from 95 parents (34 women) and 27 teachers (11 women) in Study 1 indicated that dimensions of social responsibility, such as obedience, were valued highly. In Study 2, the competencies of 477 children (245 girls), aged 4–13 years, were rated by teachers and parents. Factor analysis found the obedient factor explained the most variance in parent rating. In line with predictions, urban residence, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and parental education were all positively associated with ratings of curiosity, and parental SES was negatively associated with obedience and emotional regulation. Findings illustrate the need for culturally specific frameworks of social‐emotional learning.