Our research focuses on children’s and adolescents’ social development and family studies, particularly in three areas: peer relations, familial socialization, and cultural influences on social development. The cultural aspect of our research is often intertwined with peer relations and familial socialization to allow us to examine the cultural-contextual construction of social development.

Peer Relations

Our research interests in peer relations include examining peer status and social behaviors, such as aggression and prosocial behavior. Our recent research in this area involves investigating the social cognitive processes related to peer status, including social status insecurity, social status goals, and popularity determinants, as well as cultural values and social cognition related to prosocial and aggressive behaviors among children and adolescents.

Familial Socialization

The second theme of our research is to examine familial influences on children’s and adolescents’ social development. Our research in this area concerns several aspects of familial influences, including parenting beliefs and behaviors, parent-child relationships, and interparental conflict. Specifically, we are interested in investigating how various socialization goals, parenting beliefs, and cultural values relate to parenting behaviors. We also examine how important familial processes, such as interparental conflict and parent-child interactions, work as a system to influence children’s and adolescents’ social development. Some of our recent work also involves parental knowledge and parental domain specific socialization.