Tina Malti

Research

Malti has conducted extensive research on socio-emotional development, the origins of aggression, and prosocial orientations from early childhood to late adolescence. She adopts a clinical-developmental framework to reach a better understanding of why children and adolescents engage in behaviors that are harmful or beneficial to others. Her empirical research focuses on the role of emotional processes in aggression and prosocial behaviors, as well as how to effectively reduce aggression and exposure to violence in children facing multiple forms of adversity.

The work of Malti and her colleagues has underscored the other-oriented emotion of empathy as an important, socio-emotional process in the development of aggression and prosocial orientations, including simple forms of observed altruistic behavior. Despite strong evidence for empathy’s role in encouraging children and adolescents to reduce suffering in others, Malti challenged the view that empathy is a necessary emotional antecedent of prosocial and antisocial behaviors. In the absence of other-oriented empathy, she showed that self-oriented emotional responses, such as guilt over wrongdoing, motivate children to engage in prosocial behavior and impede their aggression by encouraging them to behave in accordance with internal norms of fairness, integrity, and benevolence. Malti continues to study the roles of other-oriented and self-evaluative emotions in contexts of peer conflict and their associations with aggression and prosocial behaviors. For example, she and her team demonstrated that high levels of guilt buffer the well-established link between anger and aggression in children, thereby helping them overcome antisocial tendencies.

More recently, Malti has advanced her clinical-developmental framework further by integrating biological markers and eye tracking to provide a comprehensive account of children’s emotional responses to peer victimization in real time. For example, she and her team have shown that children who anticipate strong feelings of guilt following transgressions of intentional harm exhibit distinct patterns of physiological arousal when imagining themselves as transgressors. This supports the possible roles of arousal and regulatory functioning in the etiology of guilt and low levels of unprovoked aggression.

In addition to her work on the role of emotions in problem behavior and prosocial orientations, Malti and her colleagues have devised new methods to assess children’s and adolescents’ socio-emotional development and detect their socio-emotional strengths. Lastly, she continues to develop, test, and adapt intervention strategies based on her recursive socio-emotional developmental theory that aim to reduce aggression and promote mental health in children and youth.

Selected Honors

Peer Reviewed Journals

Malti, T., Chaparro, M. P., Zuffianò, A., & Colasante, T. (2016). School-based interventions to promote empathy in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 45(6), 718-731. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2015.1121822

Malti, T. (2016). Toward an integrated clinical-developmental model of guilt. Developmental Review, 39, 16-36. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2015.11.001

Malti, T., Zuffianò, A., Cui, L., Ongley, S. F., Peplak, J., Chaparro, M. P., & Buchmann, M. (2016). Children's sympathy, guilt, and moral reasoning in helping, cooperation, and sharing: A six-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 87(6), 1783-1795. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12632

Colasante, T., Zuffianò, A., & Malti, T. (2016). Daily deviations in anger, guilt, and sympathy: A developmental diary study of aggression. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. Early online publication, 21 March 2016. doi: 10.1007/s10802-016-0143-y

Ongley, S. F., & Malti, T. (2014). The role of moral emotions in the development of children’s sharing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1148-1159. doi:10.1037/a0035191

Gasser, L., Malti, T., & Buholzer, A. (2014). Swiss children's moral and psychological judgments about inclusion and exclusion of children with disabilities. Child Development, 85(2), 532-548. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12124

Malti, T., & Krettenauer, T. (2013). The relation of moral emotion attributions to prosocial and antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 84(2), 397-412. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01851.x

Malti, T., Averdijk, M., Ribeaud, D., Rotenberg, K., & Eisner, M. P. (2013). “Do you trust him?” Children’s trust beliefs and developmental trajectories of aggressive behavior in an ethnically diverse sample. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41(3), 445-456. doi:10.1007/s10802-012-9687-7

Malti, T., Killen, M., & Gasser, L. (2012). Social judgments and emotion attributions about exclusion in Switzerland. Child Development, 83, 697-711. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01705.x

Malti, T., Ribeaud, D., & Eisner, M. P. (2011). The effectiveness of two universal preventive interventions to reduce children’s externalizing behavior: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 40(5), 677-692. doi:10.1080/15374416.2011.597084

Malti, T., Gummerum, M., Keller, M., & Buchmann, M. (2009). Children’s moral motivation, sympathy, and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 80, 442-460. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01271.x

Edited Journals, Chapters, Books

Malti, T., & Averdijk, M. (Eds.) (2017). Severe youth violence: Developmental perspectives. Special section. Child Development, 88(1), 5-82.

Malti, T., & Rubin, K. H. (Eds.) (forthcoming, 2017). Handbook of child and adolescent aggression: Emergence, development, and intervention. New York: Guilford Press.

Malti, T., Noam, G. G., Beelmann, A., & Sommer, S. (Eds.) (2016). Good enough? Interventions for child mental health: From adoption to adaptation – from programs to systems. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 45(6), 707-836.

Eisner, M. P., & Malti T. (2015). Aggressive and violent behavior. In M. E. Lamb (Vol Ed.) and R. M. Lerner (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science, Vol. 3: Social, emotional and personality development (7th ed., pp. 795–884). New York, NY: Wiley.

Malti, T., Dys, S. P., & Zuffianò, A. (2015). The moral foundations of prosocial behaviour. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development [online]. CEECD, SKC-ECD; May 2015. http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/prosocial-skills/according-experts/moral-foundations-prosocial-behaviour.

Malti, T., & Ongley, S. F. (2014). The development of moral emotions and moral reasoning. In M. Killen & J. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (2nd ed., pp. 163–183). New York: Psychology Press.

Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (Eds.) (2008). Where youth development meets mental health and education: the RALLY approach. New Directions for Youth Development, No. 120.