Although peer influences are thought to be critically important to adolescent development, there is a paucity of research investigating the emotion socialization practices that take place between adolescents. This longitudinal study evaluated close friends' responses to negative emotion using a newly developed assessment tool of peer emotion socialization, you and your friends. Adolescent participants (N = 205) exhibiting a range of internalizing and externalizing problems between 11 and 17 years of age were assessed and re‐evaluated two years later. Participants were asked to rate the frequency with which their friends responded to them by encouraging, distracting, matching, ignoring, overtly victimizing, and/or relationally victimizing their emotions. The results indicated high levels of internal consistency and moderate levels of long‐term stability. Close friends most often responded supportively to the participants' emotional displays, but these responses differed by gender. Also, friends' emotion socialization responses were concurrently and predictively associated with participant problem status. This study contributes to a better understanding of the processes by which adolescents' emotions are socialized by their friends and has important implications for future prevention and intervention efforts.

While recent research using peer ratings demonstrates positive relations between youth's reputations for aggression and popularity, it is not clear whether aggressive youth themselves make these links. Using youth's self-reports, this study assessed the associations of relational and physical aggression with indicators of both personal gains in peer relations (perceived popularity and receipt of prosocial attention) and personal costs in terms of retaliation or depressive responses (peer victimization and depressive symptoms) in a large sample (n 5 455) of eighth-to tenth-grade students. Regression analyses reveal that more relationally aggressive youth report more prosocial attention but also more relational (but not physical) victimization. In contrast, more physically aggressive youth report more depressive symptoms and physical (but not relational) victimization. Findings suggest that some costs of aggression (victimization) are higher for boys while others (depressive symptoms) are greater for girls. Group differences were also found for aggressive, victimized, and aggressive/victimized youth compared to the typical low aggressive/low victimized youth. These data suggest that the costs of relational and physical aggression may outweigh benefits except for aggressive non-victimized boys. Aggr. Behav. 32:409-419, 2006. r

We reviewed the empirical evidence on whether early-childhood primary prevention programs can reduce rates of child abuse and neglect. Fifteen studies of 14 programs for children ages birth to 5 years were completed from 1990 to 2007 and assessed impacts with methodological rigor. All but one of the programs intervened from birth to age 3 through home visits, parent education classes, or the provision of health services. The weighted average effect size of program participation was a 2.9 percentage-point reduction in maltreatment (6.6% vs. 9.5%), which is equivalent to a 31% reduction in the rate of maltreatment and a fifth of a standard deviation. Of the five programs showing significant reductions in substantiated rates of child maltreatment, three provide strong evidence of preventive effects. Only the Child-Parent Centers and the Nurse Family Partnership assessed longer-term preventive effects. Common elements of these effective programs included implementation by professional staff, relatively high dosage and intensity, and comprehensiveness of scope. The major conclusion is that the evidence base for programs in early childhood to prevent child maltreatment remains relatively weak. To advance the field, more longer term studies of a variety of intervention models are needed.

The current study adopts a relational vulnerability model to examine the association between hostile attribution bias and relational aggression. Specifically, the relational vulnerability model implicates the interactive effects of a number of relational risk factors in the development of relational aggression. A sample of 635 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students (50.2% females) completed a self-report measure assessing hostile attribution bias and emotional distress for relational provocations. Peer nominations and teacher reports of relational aggression and relational victimization were also collected. Results supported the relational vulnerability model for girls only. Specifically, hostile attribution bias was associated with relational aggression only when relational victimization and emotional distress were also high. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.