Pornography Use Profiles and the Emergence of Sexual Behaviors in Adolescence.

This research longitudinally explored adolescent pornography (porn) consumption and its association with sexual development in early and middle adolescence. A four-wave design with half-year intervals investigated pornography consumption and different (sexual) activities, such as masturbation, French kissing, petting, giving/receiving manual and oral sex, and intercourse, among 630 respondents (47.9% female, mean age 13.7 years; SD = 0.48) years at T1). A latent growth mixture analysis of pornography consumption revealed two groups with relatively low pornography (LP; 51.8% of the boys, 91.4% of the girls) versus high pornography (HP; 48.2% of the boys; 8.6% of the girls) consumption across time. At T1, HP boys on average watched pornography less than once a month, but more than once a year at T1. At T4, their average pornography use had increased to almost one to two times a week. LP boys never watched pornography at T1. At T4, their average pornography use was still less than once a year. At T1, HP girls never watched pornography, but consumption increased to almost one to three times a month at T4. Across waves of the study, LP girls (almost) never watched pornography. A discrete-time survival mixture analysis of sexual developmental patterning indicated that, compared to their LP peers, both girls and boys in the HP groups showed accelerated development of masturbation, petting, and receiving manual sex. Girls in the HP group were also more inclined to receive oral sex, whereas boys in the HP group also showed earlier and more frequent manual sex and intercourse. Thus, whereas the HP group of boys was substantially larger compared to that of girls, pornography consumption was related to accelerated development of sexual activities for both genders across early and middle adolescence. The discussion deliberates on pornography as a driving force in adolescent sexual development versus pornography as a medium of choice for sexually advanced adolescents.

Relational needs frustration: an observational study on the role of negative (dis)engaging emotions.

The present study aimed to explore the role of partners' negative engaging and disengaging emotions in dealing with the frustration of autonomy and relatedness needs during conflict. In an observational study, partners from 141 heterosexual couples participated in a conflict interaction task followed by a video-mediated recall procedure during which they reported their level of relational need frustration and their emotions experienced at different moments during the interaction. Results showed that in partners, more autonomy frustration, experienced at the beginning of the conflict, was accompanied by more concurrent negative disengaging emotions (anger, irritation), whereas more relatedness frustration was accompanied by more negative engaging emotions (hurt, sadness, disappointment). Additionally, the concurrent association between partners' relatedness frustration and their experience of negative engaging emotions was negatively moderated by their own relatedness relationship beliefs (as assessed by background questionnaires), indicating that for individuals who considered relatedness to be less important, relatedness frustration and negative engaging emotions were more strongly linked than for people with high relatedness beliefs. Finally, negative engaging emotions - assessed at the beginning of the conflict - were associated with more relatedness frustration at a subsequent time point in the interaction in men, but not in women. This study contributes to our understanding of how partners' negative emotions and the frustration of important relational needs are intertwined.

Economic inequality increases the number of hours worked and decreases work-life balance perceptions: longitudinal and experimental evidence.

International institutions' attention to work-life balance (WLB) demonstrates the global breadth of this issue. Yet the scientific community has thus far paid little attention to its structural underpinnings and to the interplay between these macro-level underpinnings and individual psychological factors. We examine the contextual role of economic inequality at the national level as a significant factor influencing working time and WLB perceptions using multiple empirical strategies. In the first set of studies (1a and 1b), we compared countries with different levels of inequality (Study 1a with 37 countries, Study 1b with longitudinal data from 34 countries, N = 254) and found increased working time and reduced WLB in highly unequal countries. In a pilot study (N = 81) and in the pre-registered Studies 2 (N = 338) and 3 (N = 499) we corroborated this evidence with an experimentally induced inequality perception, reporting an indirect effect of inequality on WLB (Studies 2 and 3) and working time (Study 3) through status anxiety and competitiveness. In Study 2, we manipulated socio-economic class in addition to economic inequality, showing that the detrimental effect of inequality on WLB is especially marked for participants assigned to a low-class condition. This research contributes to an integrated understanding of the impact of economic inequality and socio-economic class in shaping WLB and provides useful insights for organizations to develop context-specific policies to improve employees' WLB that take both individual and structural factors into account.