An interlocking, multimethod program of research will examine the origins and maintenance of individual differences in agreeableness in two minorities (Mexican-Americans & African American) and majority children and adolescents, and its links to adjustment. Agreeableness materializes with many different theoretical labels, but this dimension appears to be a general dispositional summary for processes of social valuations and attraction. Socialization patterns, both within cultures and between cultures, may be systematically related to its development, but there is little prospective scientific work on validity of assessments or underlying processes. Our goal is to conduct basic, process-oriented, foundational work upon which later work can build. The first research module will focus on reliability and validity, using a computer assessment methodology to obtain self-rating from Mexican-American, African American, and majority children and adolescents. This evidence will be compared with adult and peering ratings of the same children for the convergent validity of agreeableness assessments. In the second module, we will u se a prospective longitudinal design to follow the children and adolescents for evidence on the stability and predictive validity of agreeableness during periods of life transition. Agreeableness may moderate patterns and rates of adaptation to new social environments. The third module focuses on specific processes linking agreeableness to emotional self-regulation, communication, social cognition, and interpersonal interaction. The three modules are designed to build basic empirical bridges from personality toward developmental and social psychological approaches to adaptation in social environments.
