Research program

My research addresses two questions. The first is about the development of prosociality — how empathy becomes action, and what supports that process. The second is about resilience — which family and cultural strengths protect adolescents facing adversity. These are not separate programs. They ask the same question from two angles: how does development go well, and what can be done to support it?

What distinguishes the work is its focus on within-person processes. Most research asks how adolescents differ from each other. My work asks how each adolescent changes over time — a question that has direct implications for what intervention can target.

What makes young people kind?

Empathy and prosocial behavior reinforce each other across adolescence — and the effect runs through relationships.

Most research on adolescent development asks what goes wrong. My work asks the opposite question: what makes young people more caring, more connected, and more inclined to help others — and can that be supported?

The question is not simple. Empathy and prosocial behavior are correlated, but correlation is not development. Adolescents who feel more empathy than their peers tend to act more prosocially. That tells us something about who they are. It does not tell us whether empathy can be changed, or whether changing it would change behavior. Those are different questions, and only the second one is actionable.

To answer it, I separate stable differences between adolescents from change within the same adolescent over time. Using longitudinal models that draw this distinction, I found that the within-person effect is real: when an adolescent's empathy rises above their own typical level, their prosocial behavior rises in the following year. That is a within-person process — one that intervention research could target.

I also identify what shapes this process. Supportive relationships with parents and with peers in extracurricular settings predict later empathy, which in turn predicts prosocial behavior. The cascade runs through relationships, not past them.

The broader aim is a developmental account precise enough to guide intervention: which processes are modifiable, at what ages, and through which relationships. The question is not just who becomes prosocial. It is how, when, and why — and what that means for the programs that try to support it.

I use longitudinal models that separate stable differences between adolescents from change within the same adolescent over time. That distinction matters because the two have different implications for what intervention can target.

What helps adolescents thrive against the odds?

Family and cultural strengths buffer adolescents against adversity — and the strength that matters depends on the youth and the context.

Some adolescents face adversity — discrimination, economic strain, migration, a pandemic — and still develop well. Others don't. The difference is not individual grit. It is context: the strengths in families, cultures, and communities that buffer stress and support development.

Historically, developmental research has treated culture and family primarily as sources of risk. That framing persists in much policy research. But a growing body of work — including my own — treats culture and family as sources of protection and positive development. This shift matters for prevention: programs need to know what to build on, and the answer is not the same for every community.

To study this, I work with rural U.S. Latino/a youth and their families — a population that is understudied in developmental science, and one that faces a distinctive combination of structural risks. Using longitudinal and dyadic models, I trace how cultural assets, family processes, and adjustment shape each other across time.

One pattern is clear: cultural strengths are not background variables. Family ethnic socialization — the ways caregivers transmit cultural knowledge and pride — predicts ethnic identity, familism, and later prosocial behavior in youth. Culture is not a control variable. It is a mechanism.

A second finding: familism buffers the effects of adversity. Parental warmth and harshness predict adolescent aggression partly through anxiety, but familism interrupts that pathway. The protection is not uniform — it differs by parent, by youth outcome, and by whether the behavior is public or altruistic — which means the protective role of culture is specific, not generic.

Behind both findings is a structural question: how does adversity reach the family in the first place? My work extends the Family Stress Model to show how discrimination, immigration stress, and COVID-19 experiences operate through economic pressure and caregiver distress to affect adolescent well-being — a finding that clarifies where intervention can interrupt the chain.

The broader aim is to identify which strengths protect which youth under which conditions — and how those strengths can be built into programs and policies that serve diverse communities.

I use longitudinal and dyadic models to trace change within families over time, and to capture how parents and adolescents see each other — because their disagreement may itself predict outcomes.