Day 2 Program

Presenter: Elisabetta Crocetti

In this session, I will provide an overview of the core pillars and objectives of the IDENTITIES project. The project investigates how Italian adolescents and their peers with a migrant background develop their identities in increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse societies. Managing identities in such contexts can be challenging, as how adolescents address the core question “who am I?” could be the result of a dynamic process based on multiple and diverse social interactions.

The IDENTITIES project adopts a cross-fertilization approach that integrates developmental and social-psychological perspectives to generate innovative knowledge about the processes underlying adolescents’ well-being. Specifically, it proposes a multidimensional ecological developmental intergroup framework to examine the interplay among three core pillars:

• adolescents’ intergroup experiences across ecological contexts (from family, peers, and school to broader cultural systems);
• their personal, social, and human identities;
• their physical, psychological, and social well-being.

To achieve these aims, a multi-method, multi-informant, and longitudinal study with about 1,500 adolescents from two cohorts was conducted. The following presentations will provide further insights into the findings related to each of the project’s main pillars.

A complementary coffee break will be provided to all participants.

Presenters: Beatrice Bobba, Fabio Maratia, Chiara Bonechi, Maria Pagano

Discussants: Ann Frisén, Philip Hwang, Linda Juang

In this session, we will provide an integrative overview of evidence from the IDENTITIES project on the development, antecedents, and implications of adolescents' positive and negative intergroup orientations. First, we will present findings on ethnic prejudice development-in-context, with a specific focus on both proximal (e.g., family, friendships) and distal factors (e.g., socio-historical events, media reports) contributing to changes in prejudice. Second, we will disentangle how an important distal context in which adolescents are embedded, namely that of mass media, can subtly contribute to shaping intergroup attitudes through biased variations in linguistic features. Third, we will move from exclusionary to inclusionary perspectives by focusing on how adolescents form their attitudes towards policies favoring migrants' integration, and how these attitudes are shaped by processes unfolding in the family, at school, in the larger community, and within the media context, while also considering how such policies are interpreted, enacted, and experienced at the local level within the communities where adolescents live. Finally, we will shift towards an intergroup perspective to examine changes in the quantity and quality of intergroup encounters, their transmission within the family context, and the implications of intergroup attitudes and for the well-being, physical health, and sleep functioning of ethnic majority and minority adolescents.

A complementary lunch will be provided to all participants.

Presenters: Francesca De Lise, Beatrice Bobba, Andrea Buscemi

Discussants: Oana Negru-Subtirica, Kazumi Sugimura

In this session, we will present findings from the IDENTITIES project on the developmental trajectories of personal and social identities and their implications for well-being. First, we will discuss the reciprocal associations between personal identity processes (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment in the educational and interpersonal domains) and various aspects of well-being and sleep functioning. Next, we will present results on stability and change in adolescent social (i.e., national, European) and superordinate (i.e., human) identifications, with a focus on their relevance and implications for intergroup and societal adjustment. Finally, we will address the interplay between personal and social identities for multiple indicators of physical health, subjective well-being, and psycho-social well-being.

Presenters: Valeria Bacaro, Katarina Miletic

Discussants: Laura Ferrer-Wreder, Fabrizia Giannotta

We will present key findings from the IDENTITIES project, focusing on the multidimensional nature of adolescents’ well-being. We will illustrate results from a comprehensive meta-analytic program examining the longitudinal interplay between sleep health and psychosocial development during adolescence. We will also present findings from empirical studies targeting specific sleep dimensions assessed through both objective and subjective methods (e.g., sleep–wake cycle problems, social jetlag, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and chronotype) and their associations with identity development and inter-individual differences in psychosocial adjustment (e.g., resilience after natural disasters and school performance). We will further include contributions addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing how pandemic-related stressors and disruptions have influenced adolescents’ adaptation.

A complementary coffee break will be provided to all participants.

The poster session will feature empirical contributions addressing one or more of the project’s core pillars: 

• Adolescents’ Identity Processes (e.g., processes of personal and social identity, identity motives, identity narratives); 
• Adolescents’ Ecological Contexts of Development with particular attention to cultural diversity (e.g., family, peers, school, community, neighborhood, media and broader societal contexts); 
• Adolescents’ Well-being (e.g., emotional well-being, life satisfaction, psychological, well-being, social well-being, physical health, sleep quality, health-related outcomes).