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It Gets Better: Future Orientation Buffers the Development of Hopelessness and Depressive Symptoms following Emotional Victimization during Early Adolescence

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Abstract

Research consistently has linked hopelessness to a range of negative outcomes, including depression, during adolescence. Although interpersonal stressors such as familial and peer emotional victimization have been found to contribute to hopelessness, less research has examined whether adolescents with a greater tendency to think about and plan for the future (i.e., future orientation) are protected against the development of hopelessness, particularly in the context of negative events. Thus, the current study evaluated whether peer and familial emotional victimization predicted increases in hopelessness more strongly among adolescents with a weaker future orientation than those with a stronger orientation towards the future, and whether hopelessness in turn predicted increases in depression. In a diverse sample of 259 early adolescents (54 % female; 51 % African American; Mage = 12.86 years), both peer and familial emotional victimization predicted increases in hopelessness more strongly among adolescents with weaker future orientations than among those with stronger future orientations. Further, moderated mediation analyses revealed that hopelessness significantly mediated the relationship between emotional victimization and increases in depressive symptoms more strongly among adolescents with weaker orientations towards the future compared to those with stronger future orientations. These findings indicate that adolescents’ tendency to think about the future may impact whether emotional victimization induces hopelessness and ultimately depressive symptoms during early adolescence. Results have important implications regarding intervention and prevention of depression during the critical developmental period of adolescence.

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Notes

  1. To examine the unique effects of familial and peer victimization, we simultaneously examined the effects of familial and peer victimization in interaction with future orientation predicting increases in hopelessness. When examined simultaneously in the model, these interactions were not independently significant.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant MH79369 and MH101168 to Lauren B. Alloy.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Temple University, Weiss Hall, 1701 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Jessica L. Hamilton, Samantha L. Connolly, Jonathan P. Stange & Lauren B. Alloy

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University Alpert Medical School, 1011 Veterans Memorial Parkway, Providence, RI, USA

    Richard T. Liu

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1202 West Johnson St., Madison, WI, USA

    Lyn Y. Abramson

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  1. Jessica L. Hamilton
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  2. Samantha L. Connolly
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  3. Richard T. Liu
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  4. Jonathan P. Stange
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  5. Lyn Y. Abramson
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  6. Lauren B. Alloy
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Correspondence to Lauren B. Alloy.

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Hamilton, J.L., Connolly, S.L., Liu, R.T. et al. It Gets Better: Future Orientation Buffers the Development of Hopelessness and Depressive Symptoms following Emotional Victimization during Early Adolescence. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 465–474 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9913-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9913-6

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