A hypervigilance toward social threats, characterized by a heightened sensitivity to socially threatening stimuli, is a known risk factor for loneliness. During the early stages of social information processing, such a heightened sensitivity to social threats may manifest as attentional biases, influencing how individuals allocate their attentional resources when exposed to socially threatening information. Much of the research on attentional biases and loneliness has focused on facilitated attention to social threats, referring to a faster orientation towards social threatening stimuli. However, hypervigilance toward social threat may also impact other components of attentional bias whose roles in the development of loneliness remain understudied, such as difficulties with disengaging one’s attention from negative social information. This preregistered study examined whether these attentional disengagement difficulties are associated with early adolescent loneliness. A sample of 101 early adolescents (M_age = 11.6, SD_age = 0.6, 55.5% girls) participated in a newly developed attentional disengagement task, in which adolescents rated target words as positive or negative after being primed with negative (social or emotional) stimuli or neutral stimuli. Reaction times were saved to compute attentional disengagement indices and loneliness was assessed through adolescent self-report. Preliminary results from the main path analysis revealed no associations between attentional disengagement scores and loneliness (ps = .071 to .239). However, sensitivity analyses indicated that faster responses on trials where a negative emotional prime preceded a positive target were associated with higher loneliness (β = -.28 , p = .028). This suggests that the effect may reflect mood incongruency processes rather than attentional disengagement difficulties. The implications of these findings and possibilities for future research will be discussed.

When we talk about the past, we often talk about our emotions. Throughout the day, we frequently talk about our personal experiences. The literature suggests that there are different underlying goals for remembering different emotion-induced experiences, such as positive versus negative: While reminiscing about positive events may create emotional bonds through the sense of shared history, reminiscing about negative experiences may help children understand and resolve negative affect. Among other emotions, shame stands out with some unique characteristics. To uncover the characteristics of shame memories in autobiographical memory (AM) literature, three sequential studies were designed in dyads of university students and their mothers. 21 dyads (N= 42) were asked about their personal shame memories, separately. Firstly, memories were analyzed to uncover their relational context. Shame memories emerged in six distinct contexts: family, peer, educational, public, professional, and intrapersonal. Among mothers, the most common contexts were family (58%), followed by professional settings (21%) and public settings (11%). In contrast, university students’ most frequent contexts were the educational environment (38%), followed by family (24%) and peer (21%). Secondly, memories were analyzed to reveal the themes according to Braun and Clarke’s (2006) model. Shame memories emerged under five main themes: (1) Mishaps and missteps, (2) Performance related, (3) Aggression, (4) Sexuality, and (5) Body image related. Among individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES), the most prevalent themes were mishaps and missteps (39%), performance-related issues (28%), and aggression (17%). Similarly, among individuals with higher SES, the most common themes were mishaps and missteps (46%), aggression (32%), and performance-related issues (18%). Moreover, the similarities and differences between mothers and their daughters’ personal shame memories will be analyzed in terms of memory characteristics. All analyses will be presented based on participant groups and socioeconomic status, and the results will be discussed.

Moral emotions, especially guilt, are associated with increased reparative behaviors (i.e., the desire to repair the harm that one has caused; Colasante et al., 2014). In this study, we examined the development of guilt feelings from adolescence to young adulthood. We consider guilt feelings related to reparation as defined by Caprara et al. (1992), which is “proneness to experience feelings of remorse, embarrassment, disturbance, tension and desires for justice that were linked to the need for reparation of the negative results of guilt-eliciting actions” (p. 551). Furthermore, according to the literature (Malti & Krettenauer, 2012), we analyzed the predictive role of changes in guilt feelings on prosocial behavior during young adulthood.

The sample included 390 Italian adolescents aged 15–22 (M = 15.49, SD = 0.50; 42.5% females), who participated over four waves covering six years from a larger longitudinal and multiple-cohort (i.e., cohort 1 starting age 15; cohort 2 starting age 16) study.

Results of the latent growth curve models showed that the linear model best represents the data (χ² (5) =17.33, p<.001; CFI = 0.947; RMSEA = 0.074 [90% CI: 0.038, 0.113]. Specifically, starting from an average of 5.08 (p < .001) at 15-16 years, guilt feelings followed an increasing linear trend (b_slope = .076, p < .001) over the transition to young adulthood. Moreover, we found gender differences in the mean level and rate of change of guilt feelings. Finally, results showed that increases in guilt feelings predict higher levels of self-reported prosocial behavior in young adulthood.

The findings are in line with theoretical and empirical evidence on the relation between guilt feelings and prosocial behavior. As individuals become more mature, they are more aware of the consequences of their actions and more inclined to manifest other-oriented behavior, such as prosocial behavior.

Environmental factors shape the moral development of adolescents, and one powerful environmental factor is the parenting behaviors that are also determined by parental beliefs and cognitions (Abidin, 1992). The current study aimed to examine a serial mediation model to test how maternal beliefs are related to adolescents’ prosocial behaviors through parenting behaviors and adolescents’ internalization of moral values. The current study was conducted as part of a nationwide project at 2 time points, and the sample consisted of 2187 adolescents and their mothers. A path analysis was conducted using SPSS Amos and the tested model had good model fit (χ² (17) = 94.59, p < .001, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .05). Results suggested that mothers’ belief in psychological individual autonomy predicted their parental warmth (β = .07, p = .006), which predicted adolescents’ internalization of moral values (β = .06, p = .043), and internalization of moral values predicted adolescents’ prosocial behaviors (β = .05, p = .016). The indirect path from psychological individual autonomy to prosocial behaviors through parental warmth and internalization was also significant (β = .000, p= .025, %95 CI [.000 .001]). Additionally, maternal rejection (β = -.06, p = .017) and inductive reasoning (β = -.05, p = .042) were negatively associated with the internalization of moral values. The indirect paths from maternal rejection (β = -.005, p = .015, %95 CI [-.013 -.001]) and inductive reasoning (β = -.002, p = .023, %95 CI [-.006 .000]) to prosocial behaviors through the internalization of moral values were also significant. Moreover, maternal belief in shaming directly and negatively predicted the internalization of moral values (β = -.06, p = .006). Grade level and sex of adolescents were controlled, and only grade level was positively associated with the internalization (β = .04, p = .015).

Global collective action for sustainable peace is urgently needed, with nearly 60% of conflicts reigniting within 10 years (Bosetti et al., 2017; Caffel & Masser, 2020). Advancing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, we examine peacebuilding through joint human action. Motivated by UN Security Council Resolutions 2250, 2419, and 2535 – recognising and facilitating young people’s participation in sustaining peace, preventing conflict, and fostering inclusion – we focus on youth as agents of peace.

Informed by decades of research on collective action for peace (e.g., Hardin, 2015; Becker, 2017; Leach, 2024), our approach is unique in two ways. First, we conceptualise peacebuilding as a continuum. Second, we invert the traditional focus on youth. Rather than framing young people as victims or perpetrators, we investigate how one-third of the world’s population can be agentic peacebuilders (Bähr et al., 2021; Lederach, 1997; Taylor, 2020).

Adolescent and young adult participants (N = 199) were recruited for Study 1, focus groups, across four cases: Northern Ireland, Colombia, Israel, and Switzerland. Over 1,600 adolescents and young adults participated in Study 2, the quantiative scale development and validation.

We address four research questions. First, we prioritise youth voices through focus groups to deepen the ecologically validity of the YPS. Second, we develop measures to capture
macrosystem peacebuilding in the YPS, addressing this gap in the previous literature. Third, we test for convergent and discriminant validity across four cases with different contexts of quality peace to investigate the applicability of the YPS across the peace continuum. Finally, we explore the unique and universal aspects of the YPS both across and within cases (e.g., key demographic groups such as age, gender).

Implications for UN policy as well as the wider literature on prosocial action in risky contexts settings are discussed.