Poster #89 - Fear of Positive Evaluation Moderates the Association Between Parent Socialization and Depression

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

How parents socialize positive affect (PA) is typically categorized as either enhancing (e.g., upregulation through encouraging fun activities, increasing engagement) or dampening (e.g., downregulation via minimizing or punishing PA; Katz et al., 2014). Dampening behaviors have related positively to youth depression (e.g., Katz et al., 2008), whereas enhancing has related negatively to these symptoms (Moran et al., 2018). Identifying individual differences among youth that may strengthen or weaken these relations as potential points of intervention is important given that low PA (i.e., anhedonia) relates to a worse course of (Rottenberg et al., 2002) and more treatment-resistant depression (Vrieze et al., 2014). Many PA socialization behaviors can be viewed as socially-evaluative in nature. Fear of positive evaluation (FPE) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) each include a concern for appraisal/judgment and may be child characteristics that interact with how parents socialize PA to either promote or mitigate risk for depression. For example, if a child’s excitement about high report-card grades is met with a parent telling them how proud they are (enhancing) or not to get so excited because the expectations for good grades will only increase (dampening), the extent to which the youth fears such praise or negative evaluation may influence the impact parent PA socialization behaviors ultimately have. Deflecting praise may eliminate whatever benefit enhancing confers, whereas internalizing negative evaluation may potentiate dampening. We tested the moderating effect of FPE on the relation between enhancing and depression, hypothesizing a weakening of this inverse relation as FPE increases. We also tested FNE as a moderator of the relation between dampening and depression, hypothesizing the strengthening of this positive relation as FNE increases.
Community-recruited adolescents (N=107, Mage=12.39, SD=.98; 54.2% boys) completed surveys assessing PA socialization, FPE/FNE, and depression at baseline and then completed the depression measure again roughly 6 months later. Contrary to past work, neither enhancing nor dampening predicted depression changes (both were correlated with depression concurrently; Table 1). Further, FNE did not moderate the relation of dampening to changes in depression. There was, however, a marginal moderating effect of FPE on the relation between enhancing and depression (b = .06, SE = .04, t = 1.80, p = .07). Although marginal, we interpreted this effect via simple slopes analysis to guide potential future work (Figure 1). At very high levels of FPE (i.e., >2 SD), the relation between enhancing and depression is actually positively associated with depression (p = .05; roughly 3% of our sample had FPE scores at or above 2 SD). Surprisingly, at mean or low levels of FPE, there was no relation between enhancing and depression.
PA socialization relates in the moment, but not longitudinally, to depression. For youth with high FPE, in particular, the previously reported protective effect of enhancing on depressive symptoms is weakened, and actually trends toward increasing depression risk. This study adds to the literature regarding individual differences that may interact with parent socialization behaviors to predict adjustment outcomes, and results merit further inquiry into how FPE may impact this relation specifically.

Authors

• Samantha Bernice Wick, Miami University - Ohio
  Presenting Author

• Joseph Fredrick, Miami University - Ohio

• Aaron M. Luebbe, Miami University - Ohio