Entanglement of Context Co-Creation and Individual Co-Development: Insights from Adolescents' Conflict Negotiation

Contemporary developmental psychology still predominantly conceptualizes adolescent peer groups as an abstract and external context influencing personal development. In contrast, we argue that, while immersed in wider sociocultural and material contexts, microsocial context is continuously re-shaped in the course of (peer) interactions. The context is, thus, actively co-produced by adolescents, especially in challenging situations like conflict discussions, where personal and relational outcomes are at stake. 'Context', in that sense, is a process of this continual interaction and a product of it – i.e. (lack of) shared version of the event, and all the interactional outcomes that emerged in that intersubjective space. Simultaneously, viewpoint originated in the extensive study on narrative identity co-construction in adolescence through negotiation of conflicts with close friends. The findings showed that resolution of the conflict via creating a shared event version shaped identity outcomes, both in terms of positivity and coherence of the self-image. This highlights the intricate process of continuous co-creation of peer context and co-development of adolescents 'within it'. Theoretically, we should employ the insights of circular co-creation of the local mediators constituted through the interaction and their individual appropriation when conceptualizing the mechanisms of human development. This would enable a dynamic, processual view of microsocial context. Methodologically, this calls for analysing messy, perplexing interactional data on the social origins of the intrapsychic realm. In this way, we argue, we could truly advance psychology for the (microsocial) world and human making.