Home-learning during COVID-19: The psychological adjustment of minority and majority adolescents.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the resulting infringements of day-to-day life have affected families through school closures and home-learning. Yet, little research investigated how adolescents and their families could be supported during this time. Our two-wave study had three aims. First, we examined life satisfaction and academic self-efficacy trajectories among ethnic minority and majority adolescents. Second, we considered the role of the home learning environment (learning conditions and parental involvement) in explaining ethnic status group differences. Third, we studied pandemic-related familial factors that contributed to positive home learning environments. The sample comprised 121 ethnic minority (Mage = 14.04; SD = 1.25; 53% female) and 105 ethnic majority adolescents (Mage = 14.36; SD = 1.25; 59% female) in Germany. Results of repeated measures analyses of covariances (ANCOVAs) showed distinct trajectories in adolescents' adjustment (Time × Ethnic status group interaction: ηp² = .02 for academic self-efficacy and ηp² = .03 for life satisfaction). Whereas ethnic minority adolescents reported stable academic self-efficacy and a decrease in life satisfaction, ethnic majority adolescents reported stable life satisfaction and an increase in academic self-efficacy. Accounting for learning conditions reduced the differences between minority and majority adolescents to nonsignificance. Parental involvement did not explain these differences, although it was itself important for adjustment outcomes in both groups. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that good student-teacher communication, a positive family climate and fathers' short-time work contributed to the home learning environment. Findings highlight the decisive role of the family context during home-learning and the importance of learning conditions in overcoming educational disparities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Everybody needs somebody: Specificity and commonality in perceived social support trajectories of immigrant and non-immigrant youth.

Perceived social support can help immigrant youth to deal with developmental acculturation: the simultaneous resolution of developmental and acculturative tasks. This person-oriented three-wave comparative study investigated perceived social support trajectories in two immigrant and one non-immigrant group. We investigated whether similar social support trajectory classes can be found across groups, whether developmental and/or acculturation-related processes predict class membership, and whether social support trajectory classes associate with changes in self-efficacy. The sample comprised 1326 ethnic German immigrant and 830 non-immigrant adolescents in Germany, and 1593 Russian Jewish adolescents in Israel (N = 3749; Mage = 15.45; SD = 2.01; 50% female). Results revealed two social support trajectory classes across all and within each group: a stable well-supported class and a low but increasingly-supported class. Respective to the increasingly-supported class, membership in the well-supported class was associated with commonality in developmental predictors (female gender, high involvement with family and peers) in all groups and specificity in acculturation-related predictors (higher heritage and host culture orientation) in immigrant groups. Patterns of self-efficacy over time matched social support trajectories of both classes in all groups. Findings indicate that stakeholders looking to support immigrant adolescents should be aware of the nuanced coaction of development and migration.

Psychological Foundations of Xenophilia: Understanding and Measuring the Motivational Functions of Exploratory Cross-Cultural Contact.

Two multipart studies (total N = 1,638) were conducted to introduce and test a functional perspective on exploratory cross-cultural contact. Studies 1a and 1b addressed the lack of standardized measures and developed a psychometrically valid inventory of six individual motivational functions: knowledge and understanding, value expression, professional advancement, social development, personal-, and group-image concerns. Studies 2a and 2b produced experimental evidence that different environments offer differing "fulfillment opportunities" such that the motivating potential of a distinct contact function results from a function by environment fit. First, participants were more persuaded by and wanted to visit a cultural center more when it matched their motivational functions (Study 2a). Second, participants showed a preference to choose an intercultural interaction partner with a higher potential over a partner with a lower potential to fulfill their primary cross-cultural contact motivation (Study 2b, preregistered). Theoretical and practical implications of this perspective are discussed.

Psychological foundations of xenophilia: the role of major personality traits in predicting favorable attitudes toward cross-cultural contact and exploration.

Building on an integration of research findings on intergroup behavior from multiple fields of scientific inquiry (biological and cultural paleoanthropology, social psychology), as well as research on the HEXACO personality framework (e.g., Ashton & Lee, 2007), 3 independent studies (total N = 1,007) were conducted to introduce and test a fresh personality perspective on human xenophilia. Even though the studies focused on different criteria (Study 1: favorable attitudes toward contact with immigrants, Study 2: habitual cross-cultural exploration, Study 3: favorable attitudes toward contact with indigenous people) and employed different operationalizations of major personality traits (the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised [HEXACO-PI-R], the 10-item Big Five Inventory [BFI-10]) results were remarkably similar. First, path analyses confirmed that major personality traits were significant and direct predictors of xenophilia that were independent of the contributions of individual differences commonly predicting xenophobic reactions across studies. Second, and in line with the authors' more specific hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses also corroborated that individual differences in the levels of endeavor-related personality traits (i.e., eXtraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness) had a substantially greater power in predicting individual differences in xenophilia than individual differences in levels of altruism/cooperation-related traits (i.e., Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness). The implications of these findings for more general psychological theorizing on human sociality are discussed.