Poster #151 - Predicting Insensitive Maternal Behaviors from Maternal Personality and Causal Attributions: Direct and Indirect Effects

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Individual behavior is motivated by cognitions and emotions that arise from environmental cues (Social Information Processing Theory; Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000). Parenting, as a social process, can be influenced by both cognitions, such as maternal causal attributions, and inherent traits, such as personality. Causal attributions, or the reasoning behind why a mother thinks her child is behaving in a specific way, impact parenting behaviors, such that mothers that make more negative or minimizing attributions about their infant’s distress are more likely to engage in harsh and insensitive parenting (Leerkes et al., 2015). Further, direct effects of personality on parenting have been documented, such that higher neuroticism has a negative effect, whereas higher extraversion and agreeableness have more positive effects (Prinze et al., 2009). Mediators of this relationship have been less examined, but maternal causal attributions have been hypothesized as a potential mediator (Belsky & Jaffee, 2006). We hypothesized that maternal neuroticism would be associated with minimizing and negative attributions about distress, which would predict more insensitive maternal behaviors, whereas extraversion and agreeableness would be associated with situational attributions, which would predict fewer insensitive maternal behaviors.

Participants included 259 primiparous mother-infant dyads (50% European-American, 51% female). Mothers completed a personality assessment during the third trimester of pregnancy (NEO-Five Factor Inventory). At 6 months, dyads participated in emotion eliciting tasks, which were recorded and shown to the mothers during an emotion interview where causal attributions were assessed. Mothers rated the extent to which they agreed with attribution statements about their infant’s distress (Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). Items loaded onto three attribution types: emotion minimizing (baby was hungry/tired), negative (baby is spoiled), or situational/emotional (baby was upset by the situation). Event based coding (described in Leerkes, 2010) of maternal behaviors during emotion tasks resulted in two composite scores: overtly negative (e.g., mismatched affect, intrusive behaviors, negative behaviors, and persistent ineffective actions) and unresponsive (e.g., maternal watching, distracted from infant, and withdrawn behaviors).

Analyses were run using structural regression modeling in Mplus8 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Preliminary analyses revealed significant covariates of maternal race and SES variables, including maternal age, education, and an income-to-needs ratio. The final model (see Figure 1) demonstrated adequate fit (X2(18)=32.339, p<.05, RMSEA=.056, SRMR=.025). Consistent with prediction, the indirect effect between neuroticism and overtly negative behaviors via minimizing attributions was significant (B=.05, p<.05, 95% CI[.002-.029]). Mothers higher on neuroticism made more minimizing attributions, which predicted higher engagement in overtly negative maternal behavior. In addition, there were direct effects that supported previous literature, such that there was a negative association between maternal agreeableness and overtly negative behaviors, and a negative association between situational/emotional attributions and unresponsive behaviors. Unexpectedly, there was a positive association between situational/emotional and overtly negative behaviors. Generally, overtly negative behaviors tend to be fleeting, occurring in between sensitive behaviors. Thus, it is possible that otherwise sensitive mothers, who make situational/emotional attribution, engage in some negative behaviors. These results suggest personality traits and attributions each impact parenting behaviors, and for neuroticism, attributions explain the association between personality and parenting.

Authors

• Lauren Bailes, UNC Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Esther Leerkes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author