Neighborhood Features Moderate Genetic and Environmental Influences on Children's Social Information Processing

• Published in: Developmental psychology 2024-04, Vol.60 (4), p.610-623
• Main Authors: Shewark, Elizabeth A., Vazquez, Alexandra Y., Pearson, Amber L., Klump, Kelly L., Burt, S. Alexandra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Aggression; Aggressiveness; Attribution; Child; Child Behavior Disorders - psychology; Child development; Childhood; Childhood Development; Children; Children & youth; Cognition; Deprivation; Deprived areas; Emotional development; Environmental aspects; Environmental Influences; Expectations; Female; Genetics; Human; Humans; Individual Characteristics; Information processing; Male; Moderation; Moderators; Neighborhoods; Residence Characteristics; Resilience; Social Characteristics; Social Cognition; Social Deprivation; Social development; Social Influences; Social information processing; Social learning; Social Perception; Social Processes; Twin studies; Twins
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/dev0001690

Neighborhood is a key context where children learn to process social information; however, the field has largely overlooked the ways children's individual characteristics might be moderated by neighborhood effects. We examined 1,030 six- to 11-year-olds (48.7% female; 82% White) twin pairs oversampled for neighborhood disadvantage from the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development in Children. We evaluated neighbor reports (N = 1,880) of neighborhood structural and social characteristics as moderators of genetic and environmental influences on children's social processing. Although there was no evidence of moderation for children's hostile attributions, there was robust evidence that the social and structural characteristics of the neighborhood moderated the genetic and environmental origins of children's positive expectations of aggressive behavior. Specifically, we found that genetic influences on aggressive expectations increased in the presence of neighborhood deprivation and decreased in the presence of protective social processes and availability of resources. Such findings suggest that protective neighborhood social processes may buffer against the development of aggressive expectations during middle childhood by suppressing the expression of genetic influences on those outcomes. In doing so, they suggest that neighborhood social processes may be able to promote youth resilience to neighborhood deprivation "under the skin." Public Significance StatementThis study suggests that even children at genetic risk for biases in their social cognition were protected by positive aspects of their neighborhoods, such as availability of resources and closeness with neighbors. More specifically, positive neighborhood features may protect against the development of positive expectations for aggression (e.g., expectations of peer approval) during middle childhood by suppressing the expression of genetic influences. Future research should explicitly examine neighborhood social processes as an important possible mechanism for promoting youth resilience to underresourced neighborhood conditions.