Emotional separation and parental trust in parent-adolescent relationships are important factors for adolescent identity formation. However, prior research findings on emotional separation are inconsistent. This study aimed to conduct a more rigorous examination of the associations of emotional separation and parental trust with identity synthesis, confusion, and consolidation by applying a bi-factor model to identity, using adolescent samples from Lithuania (N = 610; 53.9% female; M = 14.92), Italy (N = 411; 57.4% female; M = 15.03), and Japan (N = 759; 43.7% female; M = 14.13). Structural equation modeling revealed that emotional separation and parental trust were consistently associated with identity consolidation across the three countries, rather than associated with identity synthesis and identity confusion. Furthermore, the patterns of associations of emotional separation and parental trust with identity synthesis and identity confusion differed across the three nations. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of the role of emotional separation and parental trust in adolescent identity formation by suggesting the importance of the identity consolidation in the association between parent-child relationships and identity formation across three countries.

Introduction: Developing a firm sense of identity is a critical developmental task in adolescence and emerging adulthood, but little or no empirical research exists regarding individuals who firmly form negative identities and psychosocial beliefs. This study examined the formation of negative identities in youth and its association with psychosocial beliefs in terms of variableoriented psychosocial facets (i.e., dichotomous beliefs, cynicism, and social distrust) and personoriented psychosocial profiles. Methods: A total of 2313 young Japanese people (70.9% were females) aged 18-25 years answered the self-report questionnaire. Results: We consequently found that individuals with negative identities possessed problematic psychosocial facets, such as high dichotomous beliefs and cynicism, as well as low social trust. Furthermore, individuals with negative identities had profile characterized by strong hostility toward others/societies. Conclusions: Overall, our study provided a comprehensive understanding of how youth with negative identities face difficulty in constructing relationships with society, which has been neglected in prior research.Forming a firm sense of identity is one of the primary developmental tasks during adolescence and emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000;Erikson, 1968). Whereas a great deal of research has been conducted on identity development, contemporary research has been limited by the fact that, in attempt to understand problematic identities, the main focus has been placed on how people fail to develop positive identities, with Erikson's theory that identities consist of both positive and negative sides being neglected (Hoare, 2013). A firmly formed negative sense of identity-hereafter, referred to as "negative identity" (Erikson, 1968;Hihara, Sugimura, & Syed, 2018)-is assumed to be one of the most severe outcomes of problematic identity resolution, and is not regarded as simply equating to a lack of positive identity. Erikson (1968) and other theorists (Hauser, 1972;Hoare, 2013) proposed that youth with negative identities are likely to have problematic beliefs in terms of how they relate to society (i.e., dichotomous beliefs, cynicism, and social distrust). Such psychosocial beliefs interfere with youth engagement in prosocial behaviors and enable youth to easily engage in radical/extreme behaviors, such as delinquency (Hauser, 1972), criminality (Silverstein, 1994), and terrorism (Knutson, 1981; and these cannot be fully understood in terms of a lack of positive identity. Consequently, the main goal of this study is to contribute to research on identity by providing empirical evidence of a relationship between negative identity and psychosocial beliefs, which has been largely unexplored in empirical studies. Gaining an understanding of negative identity can open a novel path for researchers and

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Previous research on identity development among adolescents has focused on the processes involved. However, it is unclear how the sense of identity (synthesis and confusion) develops and how it relates to life satisfaction. This study aims to examine the relationship between sense of identity and life satisfaction among Japanese youth living in the urban Kanto, Kansai, and Chubu areas. A total of 5,047 Japanese youth (49.7% female; Time 1 M age = 17.08 years, range = 12-22 years) in four age groups (early adolescence, middle adolescence, late adolescence, and young adulthood) participated in a threewave longitudinal study. Latent growth modeling (LGM) analysis revealed that from early to middle adolescence, synthesis continued to be higher than confusion, whereas from late adolescence to young adulthood, confusion tended to be higher than synthesis. The results of the LGM further showed that the change in synthesis was positively related to the change in life satisfaction and the change in confusion was negatively related to it in all age groups. Using latent class growth analysis (LCGA), five identity classes were extracted: high synthesis-low confusion, low synthesis-high confusion, high synthesis-high confusion, low synthesis-low confusion, and moderate synthesis-moderate confusion. LCGA revealed that youth in the high synthesis classes had a higher sense of life satisfaction than did youth in high confusion classes. These findings provide critical insights into trajectories of identity formation and the relationship between identity development and life satisfaction among Japanese youth that can inform future research and programs designed to facilitate their identity formation.

Aims Cross-cultural studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) based on ICD-11 diagnostic criteria are scarce, especially in adolescence. The study aimed to evaluate the trauma exposure, prevalence and factors associated with PTSD and CPTSD in general populations of adolescents in Lithuania and Japan. Methods The study sample comprised 1746 adolescents from Lithuania (n = 832) and Japan (n = 914), 49.8% female. The mean age of study participants was 15.52 (s.d. = 1.64), ranging from 12 to 18 years. ICD-11 posttraumatic disorders were assessed using the International Trauma Questionnaire – Child and Adolescent version (ITQ-CA). Results More than half of the adolescents in a total sample (61.5%) reported exposure to at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, 80.0% in Lithuania and 44.6% in Japan, with a higher prevalence of interpersonal trauma in Lithuania and more natural disaster exposure in Japan. The prevalence of PTSD was 5.2% (95% CI 3.8–6.9%) and 2.3% (95% CI 1.4–3.5%), CPTSD 12.3% (95% CI 10.1–14.7%) and 4.1% (95% CI 2.9–5.5%) in Lithuanian and Japanese samples, respectively. Cumulative trauma exposure, female gender, loneliness and financial difficulties in family predicted both PTSD and CPTSD in the total sample. Loneliness discriminated CPTSD v. PTSD in both Lithuanian and Japanese samples. Conclusions This cross-cultural study is among the first which reported different patterns of trauma exposure in Asian Japanese and Lithuanian adolescents in Europe. Despite differences in trauma exposure and PTSD/CPTSD prevalence, we found similar predictors in both studies, particularly the importance of cumulative trauma exposure for PTSD/CPTSD, and social interpersonal factors for the risk of CPTSD. The study supports the universality of traumatic stress reactions to adverse life experiences in adolescence across cultures and regions and highlights different levels of traumatisation of adolescents in various countries.