The Role of Emotion Regulation between Parental Emotion Socialization’s Effect and Adolescent Internalizing Symptomatology

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

The relationships between youth and their parents undergo transformation in adolescence and these changes affect how parents respond to their adolescent’s emotions (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007) including an increased emphasis on discussion of emotions and less on direct modeling of emotion regulation (ER; Shortt et al., 2016). Parents engage in more unsupportive forms of emotion socialization (ES) when their adolescents fail to meet their expectations of appropriate emotional expressivity (Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2019). Unsupportive ES predicts both maladaptive ER (Klimes-Dougan & Zeman, 2007) and increases in internalizing symptoms (i.e., Yap et al., 2008). Although ER has been examined in relation to ES and internalizing symptoms (Sanders et al., 2015), research has measured these constructs from a unidimensional perspective and has not considered the role of discrete negative emotions. The present study sought to fill these gaps by testing the effect of unsupportive parental ES on internalizing symptoms as mediated by both worry and anger regulation in a single model. These effects were tested through structural equation modeling in which latent variables were created for both parental ES and internalizing symptoms.
Participants were 132 parent-adolescent dyads (80.3% White, middle-class, Mage = 16.30 years, 53.0% girls; 87.1% mothers). Adolescents completed the Child Depression Inventory (Kovacs, 1992), the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (March, 1997), and the Child Worry and Anger Management Scales (Zeman et al., 2001). Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991). After completing measures, the adolescent was asked to identify a time when they were treated well and a time when they were treated poorly by their best friend. Parent-adolescent dyads then discussed these events while being video-recorded. Videos were coded for parental ES.
Conducting analyses through structural equation modeling in AMOS 23.0, model fit indices indicated excellent fit: χ2(29) = 35.33, p = .19, TLI = 0.96, CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04. The conditional indirect effect (β = 0.09, p < .01) was significant such that unsupportive parental ES predicted more adolescent internalizing symptoms when mediated by both adaptive worry and anger regulation. When analyzing direct paths, unsupportive parental ES significantly predicted less adaptive worry (β = -0.370, p < .01) and anger (β = -0.303, p < .01) regulation. Worry regulation (β = -0.193, p < .01) significantly predicted fewer internalizing symptoms whereas anger regulation (β = -0.047, p = .27) did not. There were no significant gender differences on any direct path.
The results deepen our current understanding by suggesting that the linkage between unsupportive parental ES and internalizing symptoms may be due to the impact of parental responses to emotional expressivity on youth’s ER skills as opposed to having a direct influence. Youth who receive negative responses to expressing worry and anger from their parent may learn maladaptive ways of managing these emotions that then may place them at greater risk for internalizing distress.

Authors

• Molly Hale, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author

• Janice L Zeman, William and Mary
  Non-Presenting Author