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Deborah Laible, Professor of Psychology at Lehigh University

Debbie Laible

Professor

610.758.5914
del205@lehigh.edu
Chandler-Ullmann room 126
Education:

Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, August 2000

M.A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, May 1997

B.A., Summa Cum Laude, Brandeis University, May 1995

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Additional Interests

  • Prosocial and moral development
  • Socialization
  • Development of racial and nationalist attitudes

Research Statement

From birth children find themselves in intense emotional relationships that provide a rich natural laboratory in which they learn about themselves and others. My research focuses on understanding how children construct an understanding of the self, others, and relationships in the context of close relationships with others. Relationships provide influences on children that are both broad (e.g., warmth) and specific (e.g., parent-child discourse) and that interact to determine children’s outcomes (Laible, Thompson, & Froimson, 2014). For example, the security inherent in the relationship supports the child’s engagement in discourse (especially surrounding negatively charged events), which influences the impact of this discourse on the child’s moral development (Laible & Panfile, 2009; Laible & Murphy, 2014). This suggests that socialization practices are only meaningful within their broader relational context and that the influence of specific relational processes depends on the broader quality of the relationship within which they are embedded. Thus, my program of research has focused on trying to understand how both broad relational qualities (such as warmth and security) and more specific relational process (such as discourse surrounding emotion) interact to produce children’s emotional and moral understanding, beliefs about others, and prosocial behavior.

My current research focuses on two major lines.  The first examines socialization of emotion and morality in the context of mother-child conversations and factors that predict the quality of those conversations.  For example, we are studying how economic risk shapes children’s early relational experiences with parents and in turn how these experiences influence the dyad’s subsequent communication at the end of middle childhood   In this work, we are taking a family stress perspective that examines how economic stress impacts maternal mental health and maternal investment in quality parenting.  In addition, however, we are also embedding children’s self-regulation into the family stress model to understand how economic risk and maternal mental health also shapes children’s regulatory capacities.  We are then exploring how the intersection of parenting and children’s self-regulation predicts high quality conflict communication in mother-child dyads (i.e., perspective taking, control, intersubjectivity, guilt induction).   Importantly, we plan to examine whether the process involved in predicting discourse (and parenting and self-regulation) are the same in different ethnic/racial groups (e.g., European Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans).  

The second current line of research is aimed at examining  how children learn to extend empathic and prosocial behaviors to diverse individuals (i.e., to expand their circle of moral regard), which is an important characteristic of altruistic individuals. Prosocial behaviors are extended toward diverse groups of people has obvious implications for an individual’s sense of responsibility, compassion, and later humanitarian conduct.  The notion of moral extensivity in young children has received little attention by researchers. The limited relevant work has demonstrated that children show implicit and explicit racial biases by as early as 3-5 years of age and that young children believe that others feel more positive about, and more of an obligation to helping in-group members rather than out-group members. It is important to study the early emergence of biases toward racial/ethnic outgroup members as well as the factors that predict racial biases and the consequences of those biases for social behaviors.  Thus, in collaboration with a number of colleagues (Drs. Tracy Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, Gus Carlo, Jeff Liew), we’ve been exploring the development of prosocial and empathic biases in young children (Sprinrad et al., 2023; Laible et al., 2021).

We have been particularly interested in understanding how White children and adolescents acquire attitudes and beliefs about ethnic minorities from parents and how those beliefs predict discriminatory versus compassionate behaviors towards ethnic/racial outgroups. Although children get messages about ethnic and racial outgroups from multiple sources (e.g., peers and media) (Tukachinsky et al., 2015; Wittenbrink & Henly, 1996), parents are one of the most important socializers of their children’s attitudes about racial/ethnic groups (Aboud & Amato, 2001; Allport, 1954).  We are examining how traditional parenting styles (e.g., support and control) intersect with color conscious socialization practices to influence children and adolescents’ development of racial attitudes and prosocial behavior towards ethnic minorities. We have also begun to explore how adolescents from conservative families acquire White Nationalist beliefs in the context of socialization by parents.  

Biography

Dr. Laible received her doctorate and master's degree in developmental psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her bachelor's degree in psychology from Brandeis University. Deborah Laible is full professor in the psychology department at Lehigh University and her work focuses on the socialization of children’s development of prosocial and compassionate behavior. Dr. Laible has published her research in the top developmental psychology journals, including Child Development and Developmental Psychology.  In addition, Dr. Laible has received grants from the Timberlawn Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Templeton Foundation.  

Laible, D., Carlo, G., & Padilla-Walker, L.  (2019).  Handbook of moral development and parenting. Oxford Library of Psychology Series.  Oxford press.

Davis, A., Garlo, G., Laible, D., Lapsley, D. (in press).  Handbook on the Developmental Science of Social Justice.   Chelenham, UK:  Edward Elgar Publishing. 

Wang, W., Spinrad, T., Laible, D., Janssen, J., Xiao, S., Xu, J., Berger, R., Eisenberg, N., Carlo, G., Gal-Szabo, D., & Fraser, A. (2023).  Parents’ color-blind racial ideology and implicit racial attitudes predict children’s race-based sympathy. Journal of Family Psychology, 4, 475-486.  https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001047

Spinrad, T., Eisenberg, N., Xiao, S., Xu J., Berger, R., Pierotti, S., Laible, D., Carlo, G., Gal‐Szabo, D., Janssen, J., Fraser, A. (2023). White children's empathy‐related responding and prosocial behavior toward White and Black children. Child Development, 94, 93-109. 

Xu, X., Spinrad, T.,  Xiao, S., Eisenberg, N., Laible, D., Berger, R., & Carlo, G. (2023).  Parenting and White children’s prosocial behaviors toward same race and other-race peers.  The moderating role of targeted moral emotions.  Family Relations, Advanced Online Publication, 1-20. doi:  10.1111/fare.12873 

Xu, X., Spinrad, T., Xinyue, X. Jingyi, X., Eisenberg, N., Laible, D., Berger, R., Carlo, G. (2023).  White Children’s Prosocial Behavior toward White versus Black peers: The Role of Children’s Effortful Control and Parents’ Implicit Racial Attitudes.  Child Development, 94, 1581-1594.  .  

Xiao, S., Spinrad, T., Xu, J., Eisenberg, N., Laible, D., Carlo, G., Gal-Szabo, D., Berger, R., & Xu, X. (2022). Parents' valuing diversity and White children's prosociality toward White and Black peers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 83, 101459.

Laible, D., Karahuta, E., Stout, W., Van Norden, C., Cruz, A., Neely, P., Carlo, G. & Agalar, A. E. (2021). Toddlers’ helping, sharing, and empathic distress: Does the race of the target matter?. Developmental psychology57(9), 1452-1462.

Stout, W., Karahuta, E., Laible, D., & Brandone, A. C. (2021). A longitudinal study of the differential social‐cognitive foundations of early prosocial behaviors. Infancy26(2), 271-290.

Leyva, D., Reese, E., Laible, D., Schaughency, E., Das, S. & Clifford, A. (2020).  Measuring parents’ elaborative reminiscing: Differential links of parents’ elaboration to children’s autobiographical memory and socioemotional skills, Journal of Cognition and Development, 23, 1-23. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2019.1668395 

Wang, W., Spinrad, T., Gal-Szabo, D., Laible, D., Xiao, S., Xu, J., Berger, R., Eisenberg, N., & Carlo, G. (2020).  The relations of White parents’ implicit racial attitudes to their children’s differential empathic concern toward White & Black victims.  Journal of Child Experimental Child Psychology, 199, 1-10. 

Leyva, D., Reese, E., Laible, D., Schaughency, E., Das, S. & Clifford, A. (2020).  Measuring parents’ elaborative reminiscing: Differential links of parents’ elaboration to children’s autobiographical memory and socioemotional skills, Journal of Cognition and Development, 23, 1-23. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2019.1668395 

Laible, D., Davis, A., Karahuta, E., & Van Norden, C. (2020).  Does corporal punishment erode the quality of the mother-child interaction in early childhood?  Social Development, 29, 674-688.

Laible, D., Conover, O., Lewis, M., Karahuta, E., Van Norden, C., Stout, W., Carlo, G., & Cruz, A. (2019).  The quality of mother-adolescent disclosure:  Links with maternal moral identity, parenting, and adolescent sociomoral outcomes.  Social Development, 28, 782-801.  

Laible, D., Kumru, A., Carlo, G., Streit, C., Yagmurlu, B. & Sayil, M. (2017).  The longitudinal associations between temperament, parenting, and Turkish children’s prosocial behavior. Child Development, 88, 1057-1062. 

Murphy, T., Laible, D., & Augustine, M. (2017).  The influences of parent and peer attachment on bullying.  The Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26, 1388-1397.  

Laible, D., Carlo, G., Davis, A., & Karahuta, E. (2016).  Maternal sensitivity and effortful control in early childhood as predictors of adolescents’ adjustment: The mediating roles of peer group affiliation and social behaviors in middle childhood.  Developmental Psychology, 52, 922-932.   

Murphy, T., Laible, D., Augustine, M. & Robeson, L. (2015).  Attachment’s links with adolescents’ social emotions:  The roles of negative emotionality and emotion regulation, Journal of Genetic Psychology, 176, 315-329.

Laible, D., Carlo, G., Murphy, T., Augustine, M., & Roesch, S. (2014).  Predicting children’s prosocial and cooperative behavior from children’s temperamental profiles. Social Development, 23, 734-752.

Laible, D., Murphy, T., & Augustine, M.  (2014). Adolescent’s aggressive and prosocial behavior:  Links with social information processing, negative emotionality, moral affect, and moral cognition, Journal of Genetic Psychology, 175, 270-286.

Laible, D., McGinley, M., Carlo, G., Augustine, M., & Murphy, T. (2014).  Does engaging in prosocial behavior make you see the world through rose colored glasses?  The links between social information processing and prosocial behavior, Developmental Psychology, 50, 872-880.

Newton, E. Laible, D., Carlo, G. Steele, J. & McGinley, M. (2014). Do sensitive parents foster kind children, or vice versa? Bidirectional influences between children’s prosocial behavior and parental sensitivity , Developmental Psychology, 50, 1808-1816.  doi:  10.1037/a0036495

Laible, D., Agalar, A., Westfall, M., Cortright, C., Pieruch, A.  (in press).  Constructing moral beliefs about self and others in the context of morally laden parent-child discourse.  In D. Vanello (Ed).  Autobiographical Memory and Moral Agency: interdisciplinary perspectives.  Routledge.  

Laible, D., Cortright, C., Agalar, A., & Westfall, M. (in press).  Narrative tasks and children’s social scripts: Links with children’s sociomoral understanding. In K. Kelly (Ed).  Narrative Story Completion Methodologies: Research Approaches across the Lifespan.  Oxford, UK:  Oxford University Press.

Laible, D., Agalar, A., Van Norden, C., & Cruz, A.  (2023).  Temperament and Prosocial Behavior (pp. 300-320).  In T. Malti & M. Daavidov (Eds). The Handbook of Prosociality.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press. 

Laible, D., Karahuta, E., Van Norden, C., Interra, V., & Stout, W. (2019).  The socialization of children’s moral understanding in the context of everyday discourse.  In D. Laible, G. Carlo, & L. Padilla-Walker (Eds). Handbook of moral development and parenting (pp. Oxford Library of Psychology Series. Oxford UK: Oxford press.

Laible, D., Karahuta, E., Stout, W., Van Norden, C. (2018).  Socialization in the context of close relationships.  In C. Byrne, J. Williams, S. Gayathri, & K. Manish (Eds).  Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology.   

Teaching

Child Development; Emotional Development; The Development of Good and Evil; Research Methods and Data Analysis I