Poster #138 - How and when to exert authority? Two experimental studies

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

Integrative Statement

In parent-child relationships, rule-breaking situations represent a considerable challenge for parents as the way they respond to transgressions has a determining impact on children’s compliance and value internalization. Yet, research still struggles to reach a consensus on which authority exertion strategies would be optimal to achieve these two main socialization goals (Larzelere & Meranda, 2015). Specifically, authority exertion strategies promoting value internalization (inductive-reasoning) can lack effectiveness in prompting immediate compliance, while behavioral limitations (BLIMITs) such as mild punishments are effective at eliciting obedience but can hamper internalization even in the presence of internalization-promoting strategies (Lessard, 2015).

Mageau et al. (2018) argued that logical consequences could be more effective than mild punishments to induce compliance without hindering internalization. Logical consequences are a form of BLIMITs whose aim is to address the problem created by children’s misdeed. As such it should ensure compliance by solving the transgression-induced problem and facilitate internalization by being more logically linked to the misdeed. Coherently with these propositions, Mageau et al. (2018) showed that children believed logical consequences to be equally effective to prevent future transgressions but more acceptable than mild punishments (and more effective and equally acceptable than reasoning alone).

Although important, this pioneer study did not assess the motivations behind compliance intentions (autonomous vs controlled), nor controlled for the idiosyncrasies of the BLIMITs. The impact of the different forms of BLIMITs could thus have depended on the nature of the specific BLIMITs that were selected. In addition, logical consequences were only examined in non-personal domains (Smetana, 2011) such that it is unclear if authority exertion strategies would be perceived more positively than reasoning alone or the absence of authority in personal domains. The goal of the present research was to extend Mageau et al (2018)’s work by addressing these limitations.

Methods
Based on Mageau et al (2018)’s study, we used an experimental vignette methodology and a sample of 214 adolescents (Mage = 15.28 years; 102 girls) to test the impact of different authority exertion strategies (no authority, inductive-reasoning-only, mild punishment, and logical consequence; see Figure 1 for an example) on adolescents’ intentions to comply and acceptability beliefs regarding the authority exertion strategies, but also on their motivations to comply (autonomous vs controlled). In Study 1, we controlled for the idiosyncrasies of the BLIMITs by presenting the same BLIMITs twice (i.e., once as a logical consequence and once as a mild punishment) in non-personal domains. In Study 2, we compared authority exertion strategies following transgressions that could be perceived either as a personal or a non-personal issue.

Results
Results showed that when transgressions were perceived as non-personal, adolescents rated logical consequences as the most preferable strategy on all compliance and internalization indicators (Study 1 and 2; see Table 1 for Study 1’s results). However, in Study 2, when adolescents perceived transgressions to be in the personal domain, all BLIMITs lost their effectiveness to elicit compliance and internalization, leaving reasoning as the best authority exertion strategy. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.

Authors

• Jean-Michel Robichaud, Université de Montréal
  Presenting Author

• Genevieve A. Mageau, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bart Soenens, Ghent University
  Non-Presenting Author