Mechanisms of Driving Adolescents’ Adjustment in Behavior: A Developmental Systems Approach

Abstract

This study, grounded in developmental systems theory, investigated the roles of family functioning, peer relationships, and adolescents’ dark personality traits related to behavioral adjustment so that we would delve deeper into these relations. Cross-sectional data from 1,878 Chinese adolescents (759 females; M_age = 14.97 years) was used. Results revealed that psychopathy was the strongest predictor of adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. In addition, mediation analysis highlighted the indirect roles of psychopathy and peer relationship between family functioning and behavioral adjustment. These findings clarify the mechanisms of driving adolescents’ behavioral adjustment and highlight the importance of future youth programs focusing on the family as a unit and preventing the development of psychopathy simultaneously.

Keywords

family functioning the Dark Triad peer relationship behavioral adjustment adolescents

Behavioral adjustment refers to individuals making actual changes in behavior to align with environmental demands (Brinkhof et al., 2022). Given that adolescence is a time in which an individual undergoes enormous physical and psychological changes (Casey, 2015), this is not surprising that a growing body of research place great interest in adolescents’ adjustment in behavior.

Antecedent factors from multiple domains were found to be the determinants of adolescents’ adjustment in behavior, such as family, peer, and individual characteristics. However, previous research often treats these antecedent factors as separable causes; there is still a gap in our knowledge on a holistic perspective of these effects of factors on adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. Drawing on a developmental systems approach (Lerner & Castellino, 2002) to human development, the present study aims to provide an integration of the family system, peer system, and individual system on adolescents’ behavioral adjustment so that we would delve deeper into these relations and find out a systematic behavioral intervention approach targeting adolescents.

Developmental Systems Theory

According to the developmental systems theory, individuals develop within multiple interrelated systems of developmental contexts (Lerner & Castellino, 2002; Lerner et al., 2015), both external contexts (e.g., family contexts and social interrelationships) and individual (e.g., personality) are crucial to development (Greenfield, 2011). Specifically, a key feature of this theory is to encourage an understanding of human development in a holistic approach, rather than studying it in isolation (Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017). In addition, developmental systems theory focuses more on the relationships among various multilevel systems, that is, individuals would shape their environments and are influenced by external contexts as well, emphasizing the relative plasticity of adolescents’ development. In the following, we constructed a developmental systems model to discuss how the family system (i.e., family functioning), peer system (i.e., peer relationship), and individual system (i.e., dark personality traits) relate to adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

Multilevel Systems Related to Adolescents’ Behavioral Adjustment

Family System: Family Functioning

Family functioning refers to the social and structural attributes of the global family environment (Lewandowski et al., 2010), consisting of three key components: family flexibility, cohesion, and communication (Circumplex Model; for details, see Olson, 2011). Family systems theory further posits that patterns of positive family functioning might benefit adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors (e.g., Simpson et al., 2018). For example, with a sample of 492 U.S. adolescents, Finan et al. (2015) found that family cohesion is a protective factor against adolescents’ rule-breaking and aggressive behavior. Recently, a systematic review (Nocentini et al., 2019) based on 154 studies further showed the protective role of parent-child communication in school bullying behaviors. Based on established findings, this study proposes H1.

H1: Family functioning would positively predict adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

Peer System: Peer Relationship

During adolescence, boys and girls usually invest more time interacting with persons outside the family (e.g., peers) (Collins & Roisman, 2006). Given that mutual peer relationship is voluntary and more egalitarian, distinct from the parent-child relationship (Casper et al., 2020), peers might provide a unique and essential context in which adolescents learn to regulate their behaviors. Specifically, adolescents with satisfying peer relationships would perceive themselves as accepted and belonging to their peer groups, which might fulfill the basic psychological need for relatedness as supposed by the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Adolescents might therefore be less likely to misconduct and present discipline problems when they adapt to the social context. For instance, in a recent review, Casper et al. (2020) summarized that peer acceptance was negatively related to problematic behaviors, such as relational aggression (r = −0.21) and relational victimization (r = −0.41). Therefore, we suggest the following:

H2: Positive peer relationship is highly related to adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

Individual System: Dark Triad Traits

Although personality is an essential individual system in predicting adolescents’ behavioral adjustment, current research has often paid attention to the effect of the bright side of adolescents’ personalities on behavioral adjustment rather than the darker aspects. The Dark Triad is a group of personality traits at the subclinical level composed of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (Jonason & Webster, 2010): Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation, narcissism is self-entitled, and psychopathy means little empathy and more impulsivity (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Previous studies revealed that individuals with high levels of dark personality traits were found to be more likely to endorse dark behaviors (Lyons & Jonason, 2015), with psychopathy showing the strongest relationship with behavioral misconduct (Jones & Neria, 2015). Thus, it may not seem surprising that DeLisi (2016) argued that psychopathy should be considered the unified theory of crime and the purest and best explanation of antisocial behavior. Overall, we propose the following hypothesis:

H3: The dark personality would be negatively related to adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

The literature on multilevel antecedent factors of adolescents’ adjustment in behavior has largely developed independently, limiting our knowledge of the relative importance of these factors. The few studies that do exist and have examined antecedent factors simultaneously have focused on Western adolescents (e.g., Fomby & Sennott, 2013). However, the unexplored question is whether the findings based on Western adolescents could generalize to adolescents from Eastern settings. Understanding the relative influence of these multiple levels of factors is important for intervention efforts in a culture-specific view.

Mechanisms of Driving Adolescents’ Behavioral Adjustment

From the developmental system theory, the interrelationships among the family, peer, and individual systems might jointly play roles in adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. First, family, as the most proximal context for development (Weiss-Laxer et al., 2020), was found to be closely related to dark personality traits (e.g., Tajmirriyahi et al., 2021). According to the life history theory (Figueredo et al., 2006), dysfunctional parent-child bonds may encourage individuals to adopt a fast-life history strategy (Jonason et al., 2014), leading to various aspects of the dark personality traits. Thus, we hypothesize the following:

H4: The Dark Triad traits would mediate the association between family functioning and adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

In addition, family context always lays the foundation for children’s socialization with their peers. The parent-peer relationship spillover theory (Kaufman et al., 2020) exactly suggests that a functional (or dysfunctional) parent-child relationship can “spill over” into the peer relationship (Liu et al., 2020). In other words, adolescents with a warm and close parent-child relationship in the family context would then get along well with their peers. Consistent with these arguments, research has found that a good quality of family functioning (e.g., parent-child communication and relationship) was positively associated with peer acceptance (e.g., Liu et al., 2020; Tamm et al., 2014). Thus, we hypothesize that:

H5: The peer relationship would mediate the association between family functioning and behavioral adjustment.

Finally, the adolescents’ individual system would also link to their peer relationship. Generally, people with high levels of dark personality traits tend to show selfish, indifferent, unethical, and uncooperative behavior in interpersonal interactions (Guo et al., 2013). Empirical evidence showed that people with more dark personality traits showed higher aggressive and destructive motivations for interpersonal aggression than those with low scores on these traits (Huang, 2015). In sum, given the interactions among the family system, peer system, and individual system and previous findings, we thus constructed a chain mediation model to test the following hypothesis:

H6: The dark personality traits and peer relationships would be sequential mediators in the association between family functioning and adolescents’ behavioral adjustment.

The Present Study

In this study, we constructed a developmental systems model aiming to simultaneously investigate the effects of the family system (i.e., family functioning), peer system (i.e., peer relationship), and individual system (i.e., the Dark Triad) on adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. Specifically, we first examined the relative importance of various multilevel antecedent factors and their detailed relationship with adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. Second, we would test the mediating role of the Dark Triad and peer relationship in the relationship between family functioning and behavioral adjustment.

Method

Participants

Two thousand one hundred adolescents were recruited from four middle and high schools in Beijing and Kunming, China. We eliminated 222 participants who did not complete the questionnaire, leaving a final sample of 1,878 (40.4% girls, age range 11–18 years, M_age = 14.97 years, SD = 1.93). Independent sample t-tests showed no significant differences in behavioral adjustment, family functioning, the Dark Triad traits, or peer relationship between those from Beijing and Kunming.

Measures

The means and standard deviations for study variables and intercorrelations were calculated and shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations Among Study Variables.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Gender (0 = boy)	1
2. Age	−0.003	1
3. Family average monthly income	0.04	−0.29***	1
4. Family functioning	−0.02	−0.03	0.10***	1
5. Machiavellianism	−0.11***	−0.004	0.08**	−0.23***	1
6. Psychopathy	−0.15***	0.06*	−0.01	−0.32***	0.61***	1
7. Narcissism	−0.03	−0.02	0.07**	−0.11***	0.33***	0.28***	1
8. Peer relationship	0.02	−0.14***	0.19***	0.42***	−0.26***	−0.42***	−0.08**	1
9. Behavioral adjustment	0.11***	−0.22***	0.14***	0.42***	−0.37***	−0.49***	−0.15***	0.42***	1
M	0.40	14.97	5.16	4.05	1.90	2.04	3.61	3.30	8.33
SD	0.49	1.93	2.15	0.93	1.31	1.23	1.70	0.55	1.16

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Behavioral Adjustment

The behavioral adjustment was measured using Yu’s (2009) revised Chinese adolescent behavioral adjustment subscale based on the Chinese Adolescent Social Adjustment Scale designed by Zhou et al. (2008). The scale consists of 11 items to measure behavioral efficiency (e.g., “I do things efficiently”) and behavioral violation (e.g., “I often fight with others”). Response options ranged from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The total score of behavioral adjustment is the sum of the overall average score of behavioral efficiency and the reverse overall average score of behavioral violation, with a higher score that denotes a better behavioral adjustment. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.86 in the current study.

Family Functioning

We used Zou et al.’s (2010) Family Assessment Device (FAD) to evaluate adolescents’ family functioning. The scale consists of six items (e.g., “Family members can express their feelings to each other”). Response options ranged from 1 (totally inconsistent) to 5 (totally consistent). The mean of six items was taken, with higher numbers indicating higher levels of family functioning. The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.91.

Dark Triad Traits

The Dark Triad traits were measured using Geng et al.’s (2015) revised Chinese version based on Jonason and Webster’s (2010) Dark Triad Dirty Dozen. The scale consists of 12 items and measures Machiavellianism (e.g., “I tend to manipulate others to get my way”), psychopathy (e.g., “I tend to lack remorse”), and narcissism (e.g., “I tend to want others to admire me”). Response options ranged from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). The mean of each trait was taken, with higher numbers indicating higher levels of that Dark Triad trait. The Cronbach’s alpha of the scale was 0.86, ranging from 0.77 to 0.89 for the three Dark Triad traits.

Peer Relationship Scale

Peer relationship was assessed by using Asher’s et al. (1984). The scale consists of 16 items and measures three dimensions: Popularity (e.g., “All of my classmates like me”), peer rejection (e.g., “I feel that others don’t want to play with me”), and loneliness (e.g., “I feel very lonely”). Response options ranged from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 4 (Strongly agree). After reverse-scoring some items (i.e., peer rejection and loneliness), the mean of all 16 items were taken, with higher numbers indicating higher quality of peer relationship. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91, ranging from 0.78 to 0.83 for the three subscales.

Demographic Questionnaire

The demographic questionnaire included gender, age, and household monthly income.

Procedure

A cross-sectional quantitative survey was conducted in the current study. Classrooms were selected randomly from these schools by the school administrators, and classroom teachers administered the student survey in a 45-min class period emphasizing anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality. All adolescents have given voluntary written informed consent for inclusion in the study. The study complied with the Code of Ethics Review Committee of Human Psychology research at Beijing Forestry University.

Data Analysis

SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 17.0 were used for data processing and analysis, which consisted of the following two steps. First, stepwise multiple regressions were conducted to test the role of the multilevel antecedent factors in the adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. Second, mediation structure equation models (SEM) were performed to test for the mediating role of the Dark Triad and peer relationship in the association between family functioning and behavioral adjustment. To further shed light on the indirect effects, we calculated the indirect effects and obtain the 95% confidence intervals with a bootstrapping approach with 1000 resamples.

Results

Regression of Multilevel Antecedent Factors to Behavioral Adjustment

The stepwise multiple regressions were used to examine the association between multilevel antecedent factors and behavioral adjustment (see Table 2). Model 4 shows that family functioning, peer relationship, and dark personality traits (except for narcissism) could significantly predict adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. Particularly, psychopathy was the strongest predictor of adolescents’ behavioral adjustment, followed by family functioning and peer relationship. Given the nonsignificant effect of narcissism on behavioral adjustment, we would not include it in the subsequent mediation analysis.

Table 2.

The Prediction of Multilevel Factors on Behavioral Adjustment.

	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 4
	β	t	β	t	β	t	β	t
Household monthly income	.08	3.47**	.04	1.91	.01	0.29	.04	2.24*
Age	−.20	−8.50***	−.20	−9.37***	−.17	−8.53***	−.17	−8.65***
Gender	.10	4.34***	.11	5.34***	.10	5.31***	.05	2.76**
R ²	.07
Family functioning			.42	20.73***	.31	14.50***	.25	12.14***
R ²			.24
Peer relationship					.27	12.61***	.16	7.24***
R ²					.30
Machiavellianism							−.08	−3.56***
Psychopathy							−.28	−11.03***
Narcissism							−.001	−0.07
R ²							.39

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Mediation Effect of the Dark Triad and Peer Relationship on the Relationship Between Family Functioning and Behavioral Adjustment

A mediation SEM was conducted to test the mediation role of the Dark Triad and peer relationship in the association between family functioning and behavioral adjustment (see Figure 1). Results showed that the model fit the data well: χ² = 143.06, df = 13, GFI = 0.98, NFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.90, CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.07. However, the standardized path coefficient from Machiavellianism to peer relationship was non-significant. Therefore, in the second step that path was excluded, and a reduced mediation model with only psychopathy was tested (see Figure 2). This model also suggested fitting the data well: χ² = 118.19, df = 10, GFI = 0.98, NFI = 0.94, TLI = 0.89, CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.08.

Figure 1.

Mediation SEM of the Dark Triad and peer relationship.

Figure 2.

Reduced Mediation SEM of the Dark Triad and peer relationship.

The bootstrapping procedure with 1,000 bootstrapping resamples was conducted to test the significance of the mediation model. We found the following mediation paths: (1) psychopathy partially mediated the effect of family functioning on adolescents’ behavioral adjustment (effect size = 0.11, 95% CI [0.09, 0.13]); (2) peer relationship also partially mediated the effect of family functioning on adolescent’s adjustment in behavior (effect size = 0.05, [0.03, 0.06]); (3) the chain mediation effect of psychopathy and peer relationship on the link between family functioning and adolescents’ behavioral adjustment was also significant (effect size = 0.02, [0.01, 0.02]).

Discussion

In this study, drawing on the developmental systems theory, we sought to investigate the integration of multilevel antecedent factors on adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. Below, we describe the study’s major findings and discuss their developmental significance.

Synthesis of Major Findings

By simultaneously considering multiple sources of influence, the synthesized evidence confirmed the previous independent studies that each of the systems of family, peer, and individual factors (except for narcissism) was associated with adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. Notably, the relative importance of multilevel antecedent factors is explored in the current study based on a Chinese sample. The strongest predictive validity of psychopathy among dark personality traits on behavioral adjustment is consistent with previous studies (e.g., Jones & Neria, 2015), which corroborate that psychopathy is considered the “darkest” Dark Triad trait since involving “things as impulsivity, criminality, aggressiveness, callousness, limited empathy, and low fear” (Jonason & Middleton, 2015, p. 672). In addition, the study advances previous research by demonstrating that psychopathy provides a powerful psychological context for behavioral adjustment, even beyond the effects of family and peer systems. This is an important finding for several reasons. First, the finding might confirm, in part, the declaration by DeLisi (2016) that psychopathy is the best explanation of behavioral misconduct even in the normative non-offender/non-psychotic youth population. Moreover, it might remind us direct intervention (e.g., Hudson, 2022) targeting the development of Dark Triad personality, particularly psychopathy, among adolescents becomes an essential strategy for driving adolescents’ positive adjustment in behaviors.

An interesting finding is that among our Chinese young sample, family functioning was a more powerful predictor of adolescents’ behavioral adjustment than peer relationship, which is somewhat inconsistent with previous empirical work conducted in a Western setting (e.g., Fomby & Sennott, 2013). This discrepancy may be due to those Western adolescents, influenced by the independent-self culture (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), “need to individuate from parents and to transfer their allegiance from parents to peers” (Rothbaum et al., 2000, p. 1131) thus spending more time with peers rather than family members (Collins & Roisman, 2006), which is widely believed to be important to develop autonomy and build up a positive self-concept (Deković et al., 2002) increasing the importance of their peers on adolescents’ development compared to their parents. In contrast, influenced by the interdependent-self culture (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), Chinese people’s emphasis on familism and harmony within the family might highlight the impact of family environment on adolescents’ development (Shek, 1997). Adolescents who display good behaviors are generally regarded as an essential way to respect, respond to, and meet parents’ demands and expectations of being a good child. Taken together, more research will be necessary to further determine if this finding is a result of culture (non-Western country).

Furthermore, we developed and tested the interaction of family, peer, and individual systems in regulating adolescents’ behaviors, and our hypotheses were partially supported. The results showed that psychopathy and peer relationship performed as independent mediators in the link of family functioning with adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. More importantly, we found a chain mediation model that psychopathy and peer relationship would be sequential mediators in the association between family functioning and adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. These findings might make a few valuable additions to the relevant research. First, the mechanisms driving adolescents’ adjustment in behavior align with the developmental systems theory that human development involves multiple levels of context and their interactions (Lerner et al., 2015), contributing to an understanding of human development in a holistic approach. Second, we note that three Dark Triad traits are distinct not only in the predictive validities on behavioral adjustment but also in the mechanisms that drive adolescents’ adjustment in behavior. Thus, fundamental differences and connections between dark personality traits warrant further investigation. Finally, the mechanisms found in the current study could guide adolescents’ behavioral adjustment intervention studies and practices. Specifically, given the distal effect of family functioning found in the mediation models, we suggest that the intervention program should focus on the family as a unit to strengthen cohesion within a family, improve positive family communication, and implement family therapy. In the meantime, direct intervention targeted to adolescents’ psychopathy should also be conducted as a complementary within a family.

Limitations

First, the data were cross-sectional, preventing us from drawing any causal conclusions. Note that the developmental systems approach demonstrates mutual interactions between the adolescents and the environment (Lerner et al., 2015); further research is needed to replicate our findings with longitudinal data and to test for reciprocal effects. Second, using self-reported data for all variables introduces the possibility that common-method bias inflated relationships among these variables. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the issues underlying common method bias, such as social desirability, may not be as problematic as previously thought (Spector, 2006). Finally, although we found the strongest predictive validity of psychopathy on behavioral adjustment, the sample used in the current study is from a normative population. Replication is needed with young clinical samples or offenders to see if the current findings hold.

Conclusion

The findings of this study are significant for the development of behavioral adjustment research from a developmental systems approach. Specifically, the results revealed that psychopathy has the largest predictive validity on adolescents’ adjustment in behaviors. In addition, we found a sequential mediation effect of psychopathy and peer relationship was significant in the link of family functioning with behavioral adjustment. In conclusion, this study highlights the relative importance of different levels of systems on adolescents’ behavioral adjustment and emphasized the underlying mechanisms. Accordingly, we suggest that intervention targeting behavioral adjustment should focus on the family as a unit and prevent the development of a Dark Triad personality, particularly psychopathy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research reported in this publication supported by the Youth Project of Beijing Social Sciences Funds (No. 20SRC018).

ORCID iD

Cancan Jin

Author Biographies

Baobao Zhao is a PhD candidate in Beijing Normal University. His research focuses on social adjustment.

Cancan Jin is a professor in Beijing Forestry University. His main research interests concern positive youth development and adolescent social adjustment.

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