Early Adolescents’ Ethnic–Racial Identity in Relation to Longitudinal Growth in Perspective Taking

Adolescents experience significant growth in social cognition, including perspective taking and identity formation. Due to the salience of race and ethnicity in the United States, adolescents' ethnic-racial identity (ERI) may have important implications for their sociocognitive development. The present study tested the association between ERI in early adolescence and subsequent longitudinal growth in perspective taking. Participants included 560 adolescents assessed annually over 4 years, beginning in sixth and seventh grade. Adolescents were from a small, rural community in the southeast United States and were from diverse ethnic-racial backgrounds (primarily Latine, Black/African American, and multiracial). Using linear growth curve modeling, we examined whether initial ERI predicted intercepts and slopes of longitudinal growth in perspective taking across adolescence. Results showed that the development of perspective taking differed based on initial ERI. Perspective taking increased significantly for youth with low and average levels of ERI but remained high and stable for youth at high levels of ERI. This study offers important evidence that Latine, Black, and multiracial youth who explore and find more clarity in their sense of ERI earlier in adolescence also show higher initial levels of perspective taking, which remains high across adolescence. Over time, most youth grow in perspective taking and eventually reach similar levels, but youth high in ERI reach these higher levels earlier than their peers, who had less sense of clarity about their ERI early in adolescence. This is one of the first known studies to directly test the association between ERI and perspective taking, utilizing a diverse, longitudinal sample of adolescents.