Kätlin Peets

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Associate at St. John's University

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes and to investigate the role of self-esteem in translating or inhibiting aggressogenic thought into aggression toward personally liked and disliked targets. Participants (186 Finnish boys and girls; 11-12 years old at Time 1...

There is accumulating longitudinal evidence that popularity predicts relative increases in adolescents' aggression. Yet, we know very little about the conditions that motivate popular youth to engage in coercive behaviors. In this study, we evaluated whether popular adolescents would show elevated levels of aggression over time when they felt power...

This paper re-examined the factor structure of a recently developed parent report of aggression, the Provoked and Unprovoked Aggression Questionnaire, and evaluated measurement invariance and latent mean differences across gender, age, and time. Participants were 333 mothers of toddlers (younger age group: n = 167, 53.9% boys, Mage Time 1 = 18.30 m...

Using a normative US sample of 477 mothers of 6‐ to 24‐ month‐old children, we explored the relations among toddlers’ physical aggression, child temper loss, and parent‐child conflict to gain a better understanding of how aggression develops from infancy to toddlerhood. An inventory of specific aggressive acts was subject to factor analysis to test...

Adolescents set different goals in their interactions with peers—some place high importance on demonstrating their social competence (demonstration approach), others on avoiding showing their incompetence (demonstration avoidance), and some youth prioritize both or care about neither. In this study, we examined whether associations between demonstr...

Physical aggression in toddlerhood has received considerable attention in the past 20 years. The underlying theme has been that toddlers behave aggressively due to not yet being able to regulate their frustration. However, there is some evidence to suggest that early aggression can occur for other reasons. In this study, we tested the distinction b...

Youth with greater levels of narcissism face a wide array of difficulties in interactions with others. However, there exists a curious lack of research on their close relationships, such as friendships. In this study, we examined associations between narcissism and friendship features over time. Participants were 261 eighth and ninth graders (112 b...

Identifying potential mechanisms responsible for victimized children’s maladjustment over time is a crucial step in our efforts to alleviate negative consequences of victimization. In this study, we examined whether rumination would serve as a potential mediator of the prospective links between victimization in late childhood and symptoms of depres...

Objective: This study tested whether the longitudinal effects of mothers’ and fathers’ corporal punishment on children’s aggression would vary depending on the context of the parent-child relationship (gender of the parent-child dyad, other parenting practices). Method: Participants were 325 children (Mage = 7.44 years, SD = .50) and their parents...

Guided by theory stressing person-environment interactions, we tested whether parenting correlates of peer victimization would be stronger for adolescents with internalizing difficulties than those without. Participants (N = 362, 56.4% girls, M age = 16.11, 56% Latino) in the 9th to 11th grades responded to questionnaires about their parents' behav...

SIP is often assessed using vignettes with hypothetical peers, but children may imagine different types of peers (e.g., friend, disliked peer) when reading them. The aim of this study was to test whether some children would be more likely to think of the non-specified, hypothetical peer as a friend. We hypothesized that children who are shy, show s...

Narcissistic individuals harbor self-views that are grandiose yet fragile. Evidence suggests that adult narcissists lash out when their highly inflated self-views are challenged. The present study sought to investigate whether being rejected or victimized accounts for increased aggression among adolescent narcissists. Cross-sectional self- and peer...

Only a handful of studies have focused on understanding how authenticity in close relationships may be related to individuals’ well-being. In this study we examined whether authenticity in a friendship was related to greater adjustment during adolescence. Participants were 318 sixth- and ninth-grade students (155 boys; Mage = 13.46, SDage = 1.51)....

This study examined associations between classroom-level reading fluency, comprehension, interest in reading, and teaching practices. Participants were 466 children from 21 classrooms. Reading fluency and interest were assessed at the beginning and end of Grade 1, reading comprehension at the end of Grade 1. Teaching practices were observed with th...

The goal of the current study was to validate a new measure of the friendship self-disclosure process that assesses the likelihood of disclosing a negative peer experience and expectations for friends’ responses to disclosure (EFRD) of this experience. Participants for Study 1 were 572 adolescents (age M = 14.82; 53% female; 66% Caucasian) from a p...

We examined whether attachment security moderates influences of two gender identity variables—felt gender typicality and felt pressure for gender differentiation—on preadolescents' well-being. We tested two hypotheses. The first was that attachment security protects children from the distress that can stem from feeling gender atypi-cal or from feel...

Researchers have increasingly started to pay attention to how contextual factors, such as the classroom peer context and the quality of student–teacher interactions, influence children’s aggressive behavior. This longitudinal study was designed to examine the degree to which benefits and costs of different teaching practices (child-centered and chi...

The effects of anger and effortful control on aggressogenic thought-behaviour associations were investigated among a total of 311 Finnish fifth and sixth graders (mean age = 11.9 years). Self-reported aggressive cognitions (i.e., normative- and self-efficacy beliefs about aggression) were expected to be associated with higher peer-reported aggressi...

This study examined whether the degree to which bullying is normative in the classroom would moderate associations between intra- (cognitive and affective empathy, self-efficacy beliefs) and interpersonal (popularity) factors and defending behavior. Participants were 6,708 third- to fifth-grade children (49% boys; Mage = 11 years) from 383 classroo...

This paper investigates the relationship between educational achievement and the motivation to learn. We used the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that contains representative samples from 55 nations. A strong negative correlation between educational achievement and motivation toward science learning emerged at the nationa...

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine associations between parental socialization values (including inconsistency in values), parenting practices, and parental involvement in their children's education. Altogether 242 Estonian mothers and fathers of first-grade children participated in the study. We found that mothers were ove...

Math achievement is not a unidimensional construct but includes different skills that require different cognitive abilities. The focus of this study was to examine associations between a number of cognitive abilities and three domains of math skills (knowing, applying and problem solving) simultaneously in a multivariate framework. Participants wer...

Questionnaires assessing mothers’ involvement in children’s education and their trust in teachers were developed for the usage in Estonian kindergartens and elementary schools. The scales were adapted based on the questionnaires by Fantuzzo and colleagues (parental involvement) and Adams and Christenson (trust). Mothers of 454 kindergarten children...

The basic premise that social cognitions guide behavior (aggression) was evaluated within relationships marked by dislike. At Time 1, a disliked target was identified for each participant (195 fifth-grade children; 109 boys; 11–12 years old at Time 1) who then responded to questions about different aggression-supporting social cognitions with regar...

In this study, we examined the development of maths skills in 269 Estonian primary school children (119 boys and 150 girls; 20 classes). Testing was carried out over a three‐year period (Grade 1–Grade 3). Before the last testing session, children’s verbal skills and motivational orientations were also tested. In addition, teachers evaluated childre...

The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of sex, verbal reasoning, and normative beliefs on direct and indirect forms of aggression. Three scales from the Peer Estimated Conflict Behavior Questionnaire, Verbal Reasoning tests, and an extended version of Normative Beliefs About Aggression Scale were administered to 663 Estonian stu...

Current theorists stress the context-specificity of social behaviors and social cognitions. Although researchers have started to investigate the relationship as one context that might influence social cognitions, relatively little is known about the influence of relational context on the social goals endorsed by children and adolescents. The curren...

This study provides experimental evidence for automatic, relationship-specific social information processing in 13-year-old adolescents. Photographs of participants' liked, disliked, and unknown peers were used as primes in an affective priming task with happy and angry facial expression probes and in a hypothetical vignette task. For the affective...

This study examined whether the affect children feel toward peers would influence children's social-cognitive evaluations and behaviors. The sample consisted of 209 fifth-grade children (11- to 12-year-olds; 119 boys and 90 girls). For each child, 3 target peers (liked, disliked, and neutral) were identified via a sociometric nomination procedure....

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that children's hostile attributions and behavioral strategies in response to peer provocation and rebuff situations will depend on the relationship with the target peer (i.e., friend, enemy, neutral). The sample consisted of 144 fourth graders (75 boys and 69 girls; mean age=10.47 years, SD=0.55...

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to analyze the frequency of physical, verbal, and indirect aggression as well as victimization across two genders and grades and (2) to assess the concordance among different informants. According to the answers provided by 257 fifth and seventh graders (mean age 11.4 and 13.5, respectively) in the Peer Es...

This study examined the links among 5th and 6th graders' (279 girls and 310 boys) self- and peer perceptions, social goals, and social behavior. Social goals mediated the effects of self- and peer perceptions on 3 types of behavior: proactive aggression, prosocial behavior, and withdrawal. In addition to their main effects (self-perception predicti...