Olivia E. Atherton

• PhD
• Assistant Professor at University of California, Riverside

Relational aggression is linked to numerous adverse consequences. However, we know little about how temperament leads individuals to become perpetrators/victims of relational aggression, or how being a perpetrator/victim influences the development of temperament. We used longitudinal data from 674 Mexican-origin youth to examine relations between r...

Numerous studies have documented the effects of personality on health outcomes. However, which traits are most relevant to health, and the precise magnitude of their effects, is inconsistent across studies. The present study used a large sample (N=460,172) to replicate and extend the relations between the Big Five and three health-related outcomes:...

Researchers have debated whether relational aggression is a developmentally normative behavior or a sign of some underlying psychopathology. However, due to the dearth of longitudinal studies, we know little about how relational aggression and more severe forms of disruptive behavior co-develop. The present study examined bidirectional associations...

Despite widespread speculation about the detrimental effect of unsupervised self-care on adolescent outcomes, little is known about which children are particularly prone to problem behaviors when left at home without adult supervision. The present research used data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origin children residing in the United Sta...

Substance use initiation in adolescence is a critical issue, given its association with substance dependency and associated problems in adulthood. However, due to the dearth of fine-grained longitudinal studies, the factors associated with early initiation are poorly understood, especially in minority youth. The present study examined substance use...

The global prevalence of multimorbidity is increasing as the population ages. Older adults are very likely to develop multiple chronic conditions, and nearly two-thirds of the older adult population in the U.S. are estimated to be experiencing two or more chronic conditions. The current study examined whether multimorbidity was associated with long...

Peer review serves to evaluate the scientific validity and quality of research by other researchers within the same field. Psychology, like many other disciplines, uses peer review to determine whether researchers’ work is published, where it is published, and in what form. However, the peer review system is imperfect, often perpetuating harm, excl...

Loneliness is a pervasive experience with adverse impacts on health and well-being. Despite its significance, notable gaps impede a full understanding of how loneliness changes across the adult life span and what factors influence these changes. To address this, we conducted a coordinated data analysis of nine longitudinal studies encompassing 128,...

Objetivo: La mayor parte de los trabajos sobre las disparidades en la salud entre las zonas rurales y urbanas se han realizado con datos a nivel de población, cuya capacidad de inferencias causales sobre las personas y la salud a lo largo de la vida es limitada. El presente estudio aprovecha los datos longitudinales a nivel individual, que abarcan...

Psychological scientists are increasingly using preregistration as a tool to increase the credibility of research findings. Many of the benefits of preregistration rest on the assumption that preregistered plans are followed perfectly. However, research suggests that this is the exception rather than the norm, and there are many reasons why researc...

Objectives The global prevalence of multimorbidity is increasing as the population ages. As individuals get older, they are likely to develop multiple chronic conditions, and nearly two-thirds of older adults in the United States are estimated to experience 2 or more chronic conditions. The present preregistered study examined whether multimorbidit...

Objective: One critical component of individual and public health is healthcare utilization, or the extent to which individuals have routine check-ups, schedule treatments, or use emergency services. However, we know little about who uses healthcare services and what types, the conditions that exacerbate utilization, or the factors that explain why...

Objectives Loneliness and social isolation are major public health concerns among older adults in Japan. Generativity, the concern for and commitment to future generations, may buffer older adults from loneliness. This study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between generativity and social asymmetry (the discrepancy between...

Most prior work on rural-urban health disparities has been conducted with population-level data, which is limited in its capacity for causal inferences about individuals and lifespan health. The present study leverages individual-level longitudinal data, spanning up to 29 years, to understand how rurality-urbanicity predicts individuals’ risk for a...

From schooling in early life to employment, income, and generating wealth in adulthood, people must navigate socioeconomic conditions throughout their entire life. Personality traits have been shown to predict how people navigate socioeconomic conditions, and a number of open questions remain. In this project, we address several of these questions,...

Psychological scientists are increasingly using preregistration as a tool to increase the credibility of research findings. Many of the benefits of preregistration rest on the assumption that preregistered plans are followed perfectly. However, research suggests that this is the exception rather than the norm, and there are many reasons why researc...

With the rapidly growing availability of scalable psychological assessments, personality science holds great promise for the scientific study and applied use of customized behavior-change interventions. To facilitate this development, we propose a classification system that divides psychological targeting into two approaches that differ in the proc...

There has been longstanding and widespread interdisciplinary interest in understanding intergenerational processes, or the extent to which conditions repeat themselves across generations. However, due to the difficulty of collecting longitudinal, multigenerational data on early life conditions, less is known about the extent to which offspring expe...

The purpose of peer review is to assess novel research contributions and encourage avenues for future research. However, peer review can be problematic, when it contains culturally-insensitive, racialized, sexualized, classist, homo- and transphobic, xenophobic, and biased comments, typically based on the identity(s) of the researcher or the popula...

Some people use health care services more than others. Identifying factors associated with health care use has the potential to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of health care. In line with the Andersen behavioral model of health care utilization and initial empirical findings, personality traits may be key predisposing factors ass...

Problems with memory, executive function, and language are a significant public health concern, especially when they begin during midlife. However, there is relatively little work on risk and protective factors for cognitive function in middle adulthood. Using data from 883 Mexican-origin adults assessed up to 6 times across 12 years (Mage at Time...

Problems with memory, executive function, and language are a significant public health issue, especially when they begin during midlife. However, there is relatively little work on risk and protective factors for cognitive function in middle adulthood. Using data from 883 Mexican-origin adults assessed up to 6 times across 12 years (Meanage at Time...

Some people use healthcare services more than others. Identifying factors associated with healthcare use has the potential to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of healthcare. In line with the Andersen behavioral model of healthcare utilization and initial empirical findings, personality traits may be key predisposing factors associa...

Objective: One large focus of personality psychology is to understand the biopsychosocial factors responsible for adult personality development and well-being change. However, little is known about how macro-level contextual factors, such as rurality-urbanicity, are related to personality development and well-being change. Method: The present st...

Prior work has investigated the correlates and consequences of early life stress within a person’s lifetime, but less is known about whether early life stressors are sustained across generations. Using multi-generational data from 1,312 offspring and their fathers (N = 518 families), we examined the extent to which there is intergenerational contin...

A widely held belief among laypeople and psychologists suggests that self-esteem and relational aggression (i.e., perpetration and victimization) are associated over time. The present study examines the bidirectional associations between self-esteem and relational aggression across 6 years, using two types of longitudinal models (latent cross-lagge...

This study assessed the co-development of adversity and effortful control based on a sample of Mexican-origin youth ( N = 674) and their parents. We used a four-wave longitudinal design and followed target participants from age 10 to 16. At each time point, we measured adversity experienced by the children and their parents and children’s effortful...

Personality is both stable and changing across the lifespan. However, many questions remain about the factors that account for individual differences in change, the consequences of personality for life outcomes, and how best to assess personality at different points in the lifespan. First, Olivia Atherton will discuss research on the development of...

Recent work has shown the importance of studying loneliness and social isolation across adulthood for understanding healthy aging. This project explored loneliness trajectories across multiple independent samples. Using coordinated IDA, we estimated and meta-analyzed identical multilevel growth models in loneliness using three samples (ELSA, SHARE,...

A large body of research has documented how personality develops across adulthood, yet very little longitudinal work has examined whether these findings generalize beyond predominantly middle-class, highly-educated White American or Western European individuals. This pre-registered study uses longitudinal data from 1,110 Mexican-origin adults who c...

Personality traits are important predictors of health behaviors, healthcare utilization, and health outcomes. However, we know little about the role of personality traits for emergency department outcomes. The present study used data from 200 patients (effective Ns range from 84 to 191), who were being discharged from the emergency department at an...

The goal of this research was to explore the relationships between four parenting dimensions (academic involvement, structure, cultural stimulation, and goals) and child personality development. Many theories, such as social learning, attachment theory, and the psychological resources principle assume that parenting practices influence child person...

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common genetic disorder in the United States, seen in 100,000 Americans. SCD complications include pain episodes, chronic anemia and long-term end organ damage, leading to significant impairment in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) across the lifespan. Hydroxyurea (HU) reduces morbidity and mor...

Personality traits are important predictors of health behaviors, healthcare utilization, and health outcomes. However, we know little about the role of personality traits for emergency department outcomes. The present study used data from 200 patients (effective Ns range from 84 to 191), who were being discharged from the emergency department at an...

A large body of research has documented how personality develops across adulthood, yet very little longitudinal work has examined whether these findings generalize beyond predominantly middle-class, highly educated White American or Western European individuals. This preregistered study uses longitudinal data from 1,110 Mexican-origin adults who co...

Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models fo...

Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models fo...

A large body of research has documented how personality develops across adulthood, yet very little longitudinal work has examined whether these findings generalize beyond predominantly middle-class, highly-educated White American or Western European individuals. This pre-registered study uses longitudinal data from 1,110 Mexican-origin adults who c...

The present study attempts to replicate and extend Snyder et al. (2015, JPSP). The original study examined the latent factor structure of the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire-Revised (EATQ-R), a commonly used measure of adolescent temperament, and showed that the resulting latent factors (i.e., effortful control, negative emotionality, an...

The present study attempts to replicate and extend Snyder et al. (2015, JPSP). The original study examined the latent factor structure of the EATQ-R, a commonly used measure of adolescent temperament, and then showed that the resulting latent factors (i.e., Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Positive Emotionality) had theoretically meani...

The present study: (1) tested whether a structure of common mental disorders within the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology was invariant from late childhood to adolescence in a sample of Mexican-origin youth, (2) examined the developmental course of psychopathology at different levels of the hierarchy, and (3) tested the degree to which chang...

The association between personality traits and motivational units, such as life goals, has been a long-standing interest of personality scientists. However, little research has investigated the longitudinal associations between traits and life goals beyond young adulthood. In the present study ( N = 251), we examined the rank-order stability of, an...

Early exposure to stressful life events is associated with greater risk of chronic diseases and mental health problems, including anxiety. However, there is significant variation in how individuals respond to environmental adversity, perhaps due to individual differences in processing and regulating emotional information. Differences in cognitive c...

The association between personality traits and motivational units, such as life goals, has been a longstanding interest of personality scientists. However, little research has investigated the longitudinal associations between traits and life goals beyond young adulthood. In the present study (N=251) we examined the rank-order stability of, and mea...

Objective Previous research has shown that self‐esteem is associated with academic achievement. However, few studies have used longitudinal data to examine how self‐esteem and achievement co‐develop over a long time span, and even fewer have focused on ethnic minority youth. Method We used data from a longitudinal study of Mexican‐origin youth (N=...

Despite the importance of life satisfaction for health and well-being, there is a paucity of longitudinal studies tracking changes in life satisfaction in ethnic minority youth. In a sample of 674 Mexican-origin youth, the present research examined life satisfaction trajectories from middle (age 14) to late adolescence (age 17) and from late adoles...

Despite the importance of life satisfaction for health and well-being, there is a paucity of longitudinal studies tracking changes in life satisfaction in ethnic minority youth. Using a sample of 674 Mexican-origin youth, the present research examined life satisfaction trajectories from middle (age 14) to late adolescence (age 17) and from late ado...

Mexican-origin youth are at increased risk for school dropout and low educational attainment. High educational aspirations and expectations provide a potential source of resilience, given their association with positive educational outcomes. Using data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origin youth, we examined the development of educational...

The present study investigated the developmental precursors of effortful control, a temperament trait that involves the propensity to regulate one's impulses and behaviors, to motivate the self toward a goal when there are conflicting desires, and to focus and shift attention easily. Data came from the California Families Project, a multimethod lon...

The present study investigated the developmental precursors of effortful control, a temperament trait that involves the propensity to regulate one’s impulses and behaviors, to motivate the self towards a goal when there are conflicting desires, and to focus and shift attention easily. Data came from the California Families Project, a multi-method l...

Researchers, parents, and teachers alike are concerned with the healthy development of self‐regulation, particularly because of its influence on a wide range of academic, economic, social, and health outcomes. However, little is known about how to characterize typical and atypical self‐regulation development, especially among adolescents, a populat...

Mexican-origin youth are at increased risk for school dropout and low educational attainment. High educational aspirations and expectations provide a potential source of resilience, given that they predict positive educational outcomes. Using data from a large sample of Mexican-origin youth (N=674), we examined the development of educational aspira...

The present research examined: (a) the co-development of chores and effortful control, and (b) the prospective impact of effortful control development (i.e., initial levels and the trajectory of effortful control from late childhood through adolescence) on work outcomes in young adulthood. We used data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origi...

The present research examined: (a) the co-development of chores and effortful control, and (b) the prospective impact of effortful control development (i.e., initial levels and the trajectory of effortful control from late childhood through adolescence) on work outcomes in young adulthood. We used data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origi...

Previous research has shown that narcissistic traits such as exploitativeness, exhibitionism, and entitlement are associated with delinquency and aggression in childhood and adolescence. However, there is a paucity of longitudinal research examining these associations, and virtually no research examining other problem behaviors such as drug use and...

Many adolescents have difficulty regulating their impulses and become prone to externalizing problems (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], oppositional defiant disorder [ODD], and conduct disorder [CD]) and other adverse consequences. Using multimethod data from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth (N = 674), assessed ann...

Relational aggression—a psychological form of aggression—has numerous negative consequences for physical and emotional health. However, little is known about the risk factors that lead youth to engage in relational aggression. Using multimethod data from a longitudinal research of 674 Mexican‐origin youth, this study examined the influence of paren...

Effortful control refers to the propensity to regulate one’s impulses and behaviors, to focus and shift attention easily, and to motivate the self toward a goal when there are competing desires. Although it seems likely that these capacities are relevant to successful functioning in the school context, there has been surprisingly little longitudina...

Youth who exhibit externalizing problems during childhood and adolescence are at an increased risk for a wide range of detrimental life outcomes. Despite the profound consequences of externalizing problems for children, their families, and their communities, we know less about the precise trajectory of externalizing symptoms across late childhood a...

Many Labs 3 (Ebersole et al., 2016) failed to replicate a classic finding from the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (Cacioppo, Petty, & Morris, 1983; Study 1). Petty and Cacioppo (2016) noted possible limitations of the Many Labs 3 replication (Ebersole et al., 2016) based on the cumulative literature. Luttrell, Petty, and Xu (2017) subje...

Many Labs 3 (Ebersole et al., 2016) failed to replicate a classic finding from the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (Cacioppo, Petty, & Morris, 1983; Study 1). Petty and Cacioppo (2016) noted possible limitations of the Many Labs 3 replication (Ebersole et al., 2016) based on the cumulative literature. Luttrell, Petty, and Xu (2017) subje...

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participa...

Many Labs 3 is a crowdsourced project that systematically evaluated time-of-semester effects across many participant pools. See the Wiki for a table of contents of files and to download the manuscript.

Aims: Alcohol consumption and internalizing symptoms, which often co-occur, pose considerable risk to the developing adolescent and have lasting public health consequences. Previous research has documented concurrent associations between alcohol use and symptoms of anxiety and depression, but the dearth of longitudinal research, particularly for et...

Early adolescent onset of substance use is a robust predictor of future substance use disorders. We examined the relation between age of substance use initiation and resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the core reward processing (nucleus accumbens; NAcc) to cognitive control (prefrontal cortex; PFC) brain networks. Adolescents in a long...

Numerous studies have documented the effects of personality on health outcomes. However, which traits are most relevant to health, and the precise magnitude of their effects, is inconsistent across studies. The present study used a large sample (N = 460,172) to replicate and extend the relations between the Big Five and three health-related outcome...