Introduction to the Special Issue: Peer Relationships across Diverse Ethnic, Racial, and Cultural Contexts.

Abstract

Relations with peers play many important functions (for a review, see Bukowski et al., 2018). Peers provide companionship and emotional security, serve as a reference group for standards of behavior, and contribute to self-concepts. Peer relationships also influence the development of social skills, cognitive abilities, emotional functioning, and self-regulation. Much of the literature on peer relationships has examined peer relationships in White, Western, industrialized contexts, although owing to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory (1979) and Chen’s (2012) contextual-developmental theory, there is a growing interesting in expanding this literature to include diverse groups of children and adolescents (for a review, see Chen et al., 2018). This special issue of The Journal of Genetic Psychology focuses on diversity and peer relationships. This is a broad area and the papers in this volume represent some of the many directions that this literature might develop. Scholars might use emic-etic approaches in their research (Davidson et al., 1976; Hansen & Heu, 2020; Hui & Triandis, 1985) to broaden the literature on diversity in peer relationships. The emic approach to psychological investigation focuses on the unique aspects of a cultural group (Davidson et al., 1976; Hansen & Heu, 2020; Hui & Triandis, 1985) from the perspective of an insider. The advantage of such an approach is that the researchers develop a deeper understanding of the meaning, function, and outcomes associated with varying psychological constructs. In the case of peer relationships, the emic approach can provide information about the nature of peer relationships within the group of interest. Two of the papers in this special issue use an emic approach to focus on prosocial behavior with peers. Li and Hao examined self-esteem and self-compassion, and the way in which they are related to prosocial behavior in a sample of Chinese children, building on a growing number of scholars examining peer relationships within the context of China (see Chen et al., 2018). Consistent with research from Western samples (e.g., Fu et al., 2017), results suggested that self-esteem was positively related to prosocial behavior. Additionally, the effect of self-esteem on prosocial behavior was moderated by self-compassion for girls but not for boys. Skoczeń examined the relationships of several aspects of parenting with prosocial behavior and socially related problem behavior in Polish children. Although the children in the sample could be considered White, the cultural context of Poland as an Eastern European country during the Cold War (today considered Central Europe by some) with its geographically central location during World War II, history as a communist country, and the subsequent collapse of communism (Delvecchio et al., 2020), differs substantially from many countries in Western Europe. Delvecchio et al. (2020) suggested that, given the rapid cultural changes that occurred after the collapse of communism, the family