Poster #132 - Adolescents’ Disclosure and Secrecy Patterns and Psychological Well-Being in Parents and Best Friend Relationship Contexts

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Disclosure and secrecy in close relationships are important behaviors that have significant effects on psychological well-being (Almas, Grusec, & Tackett, 2011). While the burden of secrecy has been related to negative psychological outcomes, such as higher depression and anti-social behaviors (Laird & Marrero, 2010), sharing information has been related to favorable outcomes, such as lower levels of risky behaviors (Urry, Nelson, & Padilla-Walker, 2011). Most of the adolescent disclosure and secrecy research has focused on disclosure and/or secrecy in the mother-adolescent dyad. Thus, disclosure and secrecy in other intimate relationships, such as the father-adolescent dyad and best friend-adolescent dyad have been overlooked. The present study aimed to examine adolescent disclosure and secrecy in three important close relationship contexts: relationship with the mother, father, and best friend. The person-centered approach was adopted to evaluate the different patterns of disclosure and secrecy in these three close relationship contexts. Moreover, the present study evaluated if and how disclosure and secrecy patterns relate to adolescents’ life satisfaction, problem-solving confidence, and trait anxiety.
Participants were 1211 high school adolescents (60.1% Female, Mage= 15.08 years) from an urban city in Turkey. Adolescents completed questionnaires assessing their disclosure and secrecy levels towards their mother, father (Kerr & Stattin, 2000), and best-friend, general life satisfaction (Huebner & Gilman, 2002), problem solving confidence (Heppner & Peterson, 1982), and trait anxiety (Spielberger et.al, 1970).
Using disclosure and secrecy levels, cluster analysis revealed six different patterns. Clusters were named based on high and/or low disclosure and secrecy from mother, father, and best-friend (see Table 1). A MANOVA analysis was conducted to validate a six-cluster solution and clusters were found to be significantly different from each other, Pillai’s Trace = 1.70, F(30, 6020)= 103.38, p<.001, partial η2=.34. To examine differences between clusters, a MANCOVA analysis and Tukey post-hoc test (controlling for the age, gender, and socioeconomic status) were conducted (see Table 2). As expected, the high disclosure and low secrecy cluster (Sharing) was highest in problem solving confidence and life satisfaction and lowest in anxiety. In comparison to the Sharing cluster, the low disclosure and high secrecy cluster (Cagey) showed the opposite trend. Adolescents who endorsed high secrecy from fathers exhibited higher anxiety traits compared to adolescents who had high secrecy from mother. Disclosure and secrecy from a best friend were related to positive well-being only for the groups that had lower disclosure and higher secrecy from parents, especially from the father. However, low secrecy levels were not found to be associated with high well-being if disclosure levels were low.
Findings revealed that in comparison to best-friends, disclosure and secrecy from parents have a stronger relation to adolescent well-being. While fathers have a unique role, disclosure and secrecy to a best friend also play an important role in adolescents’ well-being. Thus, considering the hierarchical and closed structure of Turkish families (Sunar, 2002), it is important to promote the father-adolescent bond without mothers being a mediator and to open a welcoming space for best friends, especially when parents are not available.

Authors

• Ebra Elsharnouby, Clark University
  Presenting Author

• Ayfer Dost Gözkan, Özyeğin University
  Non-Presenting Author