Adolescents’ Everyday Experiences of Provoking and Prosocial Events: Links to Peer-Nominated Victimization and Daily Mood

• In Event: 2-091 - Ambulatory Assessment of Adolescents’ Externalizing, Capturing Teen Risks In-Situ

Integrative Statement

Early adolescence is a period of significant social risk and opportunity, as youth spend increasingly more time with their peers (Larson, 2001) and become more sensitive to the feedback they receive from friends and classmates (Somerville, 2013). Although peer relationships during this period clearly play a critical role in both concurrent and long-term well-being (e.g., McDougall & Vaillancourt, 2015), little is known about the day-to-day interactions with peers that comprise the everyday social lives of young adolescents, and how these events are linked to their emotional and social adjustment.

We used a daily-diary approach to assess young adolescents’ daily experiences of two types of events: (a) provocation by peers, which has been linked to greater daily negative affect (e.g., Morrow et al., 2015), and (b) prosocial overtures, which may be linked to greater daily positive affect. We also examined the association between peer-nominated victimization and aggression and report of daily events, hypothesizing that greater aggression and victimization would be associated with increased report of provoking events, and possibly lower report of prosocial overtures. Finally, we tested whether aggression and victimization moderated the associations between daily events and affect. For example, we expected that youth experiencing more victimization may show a stronger association between daily provocation and negative affect.

Research assistants called 257 participants (M age 12.84, SD = 0.35, 60.3% female; 83.3% non-Hispanic white) in the early evening for 10 consecutive school days. After administering the 10-item PANAS to assess positive and negative affect, RAs asked participants whether anyone at school had done anything (a) mean to them and (b) nice for them that day. Participants answered a structured set of questions about each event. Victimization (5 items, e.g., is excluded by a group of friends) and aggression (4 items; e.g., says mean things to others) were assessed in classrooms at school using an unlimited nomination procedure.
To date, coding of events has been completed for 170 participants, who described 328 provoking events (e.g., verbal aggression, relational aggression) and 1277 prosocial events (e.g., receiving a compliment, being comforted). All events were coded by two RAs; kappas were 1.0 (provoking) and .76 (prosocial). A multivariate linear-regression model with gender as a covariate revealed that neither aggression nor victimization predicted report of daily prosocial events, βs = .06, -.12, ps > .05, or provoking events, βs = .05, .08, ps > .05. Multi-level modeling indicated that at the daily level, report of mean events was associated with greater report of negative affect and lower report of positive affect, after controlling for victimization, aggression, and gender (see Table 1). Moreover, victimization moderated the associations between daily events and affect, such that greater victimization predicted lower positive affect in response to prosocial events and greater negative affect in response to provocation (see Table 2).

In sum, results suggest that peer-nominated aggression and victimization did not predict the number of prosocial and provoking events that young adolescents experience, but being victimized may be linked to the strength of their affective responses to these events.

Authors

• Melanie Dirks, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Kristina McDonald, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alison Farrell-Reeves, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephen Ungvary, SKIM Market Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carolyn E. Gibson, Drury University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joo Young Yang, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenna Reardanz, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author