How do adults think, feel, and behave towards teenagers? Measuring and understanding adults’ attitudes towards teenagers

Wolf, Lukas J., Costin, Vlad, Nolan, Alexander, Hurst, Elizah-Marie, Ascensão, Sara, Foad, Colin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0423-2848, Haddock, Geoffrey ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5293-2772 and Maio, Gregory R. 2025. How do adults think, feel, and behave towards teenagers? Measuring and understanding adults’ attitudes towards teenagers. Social Psychological and Personality Science

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Abstract

Despite the pervasiveness of adult-teenager relations, research has largely neglected adults’ attitudes towards teenagers. Eight studies (N=3,517) examined the content of adults’ attitudes towards teenagers and developed a 14-item measure that assesses three factors: openness intentions, negative beliefs, and positive emotions regarding teenagers. Openness intentions involve empathic orientations and predict more contact with teenagers and more donations to a charity benefitting teenagers. Negative beliefs involve self-oriented and conservative orientations and predict desires to control teenagers (e.g., social dominance orientation, opposing voting rights for 16-17 year olds). Positive emotions involve higher personal well-being and predict more forgiving evaluations and decisions regarding norm-defying teenagers (e.g., teenage suspects). These factors were invariant across the United Kingdom, United States, and South Africa. Together, the findings offer fundamental new insights about adults’ attitudes towards teenagers and enable future research into how these attitudes influence adult-teenager relations and teenager well-being.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1948-5506
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 August 2025
Date of Acceptance:	18 August 2025
Last Modified:	19 Aug 2025 13:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180559

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