Poster #215 - The Influence of Parent and Peer Attachment on Emerging Adults’ Prosocial Tendencies and Mental Health

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

According to Attachment Theory (Bowlby, 1969), the development of an internal working model guides adolescent behavior in new and ambiguous situations by providing a foundation on which to base all further relationships (Bretherton & Munholland, 2008). These future relationships may in turn impact social and mental health outcomes. For example, the effects of poorer parental attachment upon drug use has been mediated by lower levels of school connectedness and involvement with friends who use drugs (Henry, 2008). For female students, the relationship between more secure parental attachment and higher levels of life-satisfaction was partially mediated by more secure peer attachment (Ma & Huebner, 2008). The current study extends previous findings by analyzing whether emerging adults use parental attachments in the formation of peer attachments, and the impact of these peer attachments on well-being.
When considering college students’ parental and peer attachments, it may be important to examine their prosocial (i.e., helping) tendencies, as well as their mental health outcomes. Previous examinations of the socialization of prosocial behaviors and mental health have established that parental attachment is positively related to these outcomes in children and adolescents (Oldfield et al., 2016). However, this research has focused on global dimensions of prosocial behaviors and mental health, possibly masking more nuanced relations among these constructs (see Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2014). Thus, additional goals of the current study were to examine how parental and peer attachments were related to specific prosocial tendencies and various aspects of mental health, as well as whether these same patterns exist in emerging adults.
The current sample included 191 college students (49% female; M age=18.82 years, SD=1.00; 70% White). The measures administered assessed maternal and paternal attachment (Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987), six types of situational and dispositional prosocial behaviors (PSB) (altruistic, public, compliant, emotional, dire, and anonymous; Prosocial Tendencies Measure; Carlo & Randall, 2002), and depression, anxiety and stress (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995).
Two separate mediational models testing the indirect relations among the maternal or paternal attachment, peer attachment, and prosocial behaviors and mental health outcomes were tested in Mplus 8.0. Results can be found in Table 1 and Figure 1. In the maternal model, indirect effects were found between maternal attachment, peer attachment, and stress (95% CI: -.11,-.01), depression (95% CI: -.10,-.01), emotional PSB (95% CI: .04,.16), dire PSB (95% CI: .03,.15), altruistic PSB (95% CI: .01,.11), and compliant PSB (95% CI: .03,.18). In the paternal model, indirect effects were found between paternal attachment, peer attachment, and stress (95% CI: -.08,-.01), anxiety (95% CI: -.05,-.01), depression (95% CI: -.07,-.01), emotional PSB (95% CI: .02,.09), dire PSB (95% CI: .02,.10), and compliant PSB (95% CI: .01,.10). Direct effects between attachment and outcomes were observed primarily for mental health. Discussion will focus on the continued importance of parental attachment as it relates to socioemotional and mental health outcomes in emerging adulthood, as well as the utility of multidimensional assessments of prosocial behaviors.

Authors

• Alexandria Evans, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
  Presenting Author

• Meredith McGinley, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
  Non-Presenting Author