Early adolescents' social mistrust in motion The nature of mistrust and its links to interpersonal relationships across cultural and educational contexts

Social mistrust is conceptualized as part of an internal working model of the social world, shaping adolescents’ relationships with others. This dissertation investigated social mistrust in early adolescence, examining its referent-specific nature, developmental trajectories, and associations with interpersonal relationships across cultural and educational contexts. Findings consistently support the referent-specific nature of mistrust: teacher mistrust and peer mistrust are distinct schemata, which differ from general mistrust. Cross-sectionally, teacher mistrust and peer mistrust are associated with relationships with specific teachers and classmates, respectively, and peer mistrust is also associated with student–teacher conflict. Cross-cultural analyses revealed differences between contexts: compared to Dutch early adolescents, Chinese early adolescents displayed higher general mistrust but lower peer mistrust, with cultural values such as interdependence or risk aversion explaining these differences. Furthermore, among Chinese early adolescents, the links between teacher mistrust and student–teacher relationships were weaker than among their Dutch counterparts. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated that teacher mistrust increases across school transitions, whereas peer mistrust remains relatively stable. Greater student–teacher closeness in the first term of middle school predicted lower teacher mistrust in the following term, while higher teacher mistrust in the first term predicted more student–teacher conflict in the next term. In contrast, peer mistrust showed no longitudinal cross-lagged associations with classmate relationships. Overall, the findings underscore that social mistrust is a context-dependent and relationally nuanced construct.