The present research project has two specific aims: (1) to gather information using survey methods concerning the development of self-awareness and empathic tendencies during middle and late adolescence, and (2) to determine how these personality characteristics add to the current understanding of personal and social adjustment in adolescence. As such, this proposal not only represents the first longitudinal study of self-awareness and empathic tendencies, but also is the first attempt of its kind to test theoretical links between these parameters and measures of adjustment having to do with parent-child and peer group relations. It is proposed that dispositional self-awareness and empathy indirectly affect adolescent adjustment through their effect on interpersonal behavior known to be related to adjustment. The proposed program of research would investigate this general model over a four year period of time employing as measures of adjustment the adolescents' self-reports of loneliness, sociometric indexes of friendship networks within the school, and subjective versus objective perceptions of self. Preliminary results of the first year's measurements of adolescents in the proposed target high school are discussed, with specific attention given to the effects that self-awareness and empathy have on loneliness.